20 One Shots: More Plotbunnies!
by Bekkoni
Summary: Prompt 20: The Anniversary of the Justice League! My third series of 20 one-shots, all based on one-word prompts. Mostly Batman- and Trinity-centric. Rated T for some swearing and goofy fluff.
1. Break

A/N: Wow, I can't believe I'm going to write 20 more one-shots. Does this fit Einstein's definition of insanity? Oh well, it can't be _that _bad for me. As always, more prompts and reviews are appreciated.

~Leg~

The fight was almost over. Clark had taken down the monster, and the Batman and Flash were evacuating the apartment building that was coming down.

"How you guys doing?" Clark asked. "I'm going to knock him down in a second.

"Everybody's out." Flash zipped down the street. "Bats is getting out the roof and then—"

The apartment building caved in on itself, falling straight down the middle. Clark paused mid-punch—the monster toppled over anyway and crashed through the ceiling.

"Batman!" he yelled into the comlink. "Bruce! Are you all right?"

There was a deadly silence at the other end of the line. Then it crackled.

"I'm okay," Batman said, though his voice sounded tight. "Tough I maybe be a bit trapped."

"On my way." Clark zoomed over to the building, searching with his x-ray vision until he found Bruce on the tenth floor. He went in through the window and saw him with his leg pinned under a steel girder. Clark lifted it off him.

"You okay?" he asked, when Bruce failed to leap to his feet.

Bruce tried to move his leg and winced. "I think I hurt myself," he said.

Clark tried to x-ray him. "Well it would be a lot easier to tell if you didn't wear a lead-lined suit."

Bruce shrugged as if this was a reasonable risk. Then he took a small breath and got up. His right leg crumpled under his weight. Clark grabbed him and picked him up before he could protest—the ceiling was coming down. They flew out just as the walls dissolved and the building collapsed.

Bruce was sitting in the med bay, on a bed, holding a bag of ice against his leg. By the time Clark finished filling out the mission reports he was already looking a little glassy-eyed from the painkillers.

"X-rays back yet?" Clark asked.

"No," Bruce said. "But I broke my tibia."

"There's no possible way you know that for sure," Clark said.

"After you've eaten a sandwich you know what it tastes like." Bruce rubbed his eyes tiredly and leaned back a little against the pillow. J'onn walked in then, holding the glossy black paper with Bruce's lower leg printed on it.

"Broken tibia," he pronounced. Clark blinked.

Bruce just sighed. "How long."

"About six weeks," J'onn said, and this time Bruce groaned.

Almost two weeks later, Clark was sitting at his desk working on a last-minute crime beat piece that Perry wanted done in forty-five minutes (_"Or I'll have your head on a pike, Kent, so help me god!"_) when the telephone rang. He picked it up and got a very exasperated Alfred.

"He's driving me crazy," said Alfred, in his normal calm voice. The only way Clark could distinguish the exasperation was because he'd dropped the 'Master Bruce' from the sentence.

"Alfred, I'd love to help you out, but Perry's really on me about this story and—"

"Mister Kent, I do not believe I have made myself clear." Alfred took a deep breath. "If something is not done soon, sir, I fear either I or Master Bruce will no longer be occupying the premises."

"I'll be right there," Clark said.

Clark arrived at the manor to a lot of yelling. Mostly Alfred shouting (or saying loudly n a most exasperated voice), "Please, Master Bruce, do find something to occupy yourself that does not come with the possibility of injury."

And Bruce shouting (truly shouting) back, "What am I supposed to do, Alfred? Take a nice little jog?"

Clark winced and very cautiously rang the doorbell twice. Alfred answered the door, drying his hand on a dishtowel. He smiled wearily. "He is in the sunroom, sir, third door in the south wing. Please, do try your utmost."

"I'll give it my best shot," Clark promised, and went off in search of Bruce.

He found him exactly where Alfred had said, lying upside down on the couch with his legs over the back, his good one bent and the casted one straight out. There was what looked like piles of shredded newspaper all around him. He practically growled when Clark walked in. "What the hell are _you_ doing here."

"Alfred thought you might need some cheering up," Clark said, with the distinct concern that the kryptonite was going to come out if he wasn't careful.

"You mean Alfred thinks I need a babysitter."

"No—company." Clark looked down at the piles by his feet. "What _is_ all this stuff?"

"Sodoku books." Bruce sighed long-sufferingly. "I finished them all so I just started shredding them up."

"So this is what happens when you take one of the world's smartest men and give him nothing to do." Clark was quite amused by this, though he knew better than to show it. "Did you become Batman out of sheer boredom?"

Bruce gave him a look like this was a line that shouldn't be crossed. Clark didn't. Instead he swept the piles into the wastebasket with a small burst of superspeed. "You want to play chess?"

"I'd win."

"I know, but I'm asking if you want to play, you know, for fun."

"What's the fun in that?"

"Come on, Bruce, there has to be some normal-person thing you can think of to do."

Bruce rolled his eyes like everyone but him was an utter idiot. "Oracle has all of the computer stuff and evidence checking under control. Dick and Tim have practically locked me out of the cave. I would go upstairs to the attic and clean it out a little, but it's four flights of stairs and heavy boxes, and for fuck's sake broken legs _hurt_."

"Maybe you should actually take some aspirin," Clark suggested. "It might make you less grouchy."

Bruce glared at him. "I don't like painkillers. They make me drowsy."

Clark sighed. "Personally, Bruce, I don't know how you or anyone else is going to get through another four weeks without you taking at least a couple of naps. Now you have to be able to think of some activity you'd enjoy."

"I don't know." Bruce turned around so he was sitting right-side up. "God. How does Wally manage to waste so much of his time?"

Clark smiled. "Wonderful idea."

"What?"

Clark vanished and was back literally in the blink of an eye, holding a brown cardboard box. "Here we go. This should be good for at least a few hours."

Bruce raised an eyebrow in question, but Clark had his back turned and was hooking something into the television. "What the hell is that device, Clark, and why are you attaching it to my TV?"

"It's Wally's Xbox," Clark explained. "And I'm putting it here because we're going to play it."

Bruce's expression was on of utter, thorough disgust. "You want me to play _video games_?"

Clark plunked himself down on the couch, a controller in his hand, and started up the game. Something with zombies. Bruce wrinkled his nose. "Yes, I want you to play a video game. Unless you don't think you can beat me."

Bruce glared at him for a minute, but then his competitive side won out and he snatched the second controller from Clark's outstretched hand. "Fine. But no superspeed."

"I wouldn't dream of it," Clark said, and they started playing.

Sometime after—how long after, Bruce couldn't tell—Alfred came in and asked if they wanted pizza. Bruce just nodded and hit a zombie with a carefully aimed crossbow.

Alfred actually _ordered_ pizza, quite the rarity. Of course, the sight of the boxes and the smell of pepperoni brought Dick and Tim running. They walked into the sunroom and stopped short at the sight of Clark—and more so Bruce—sitting on the couch with their feet on the ottoman, muttering at each other about killing the undead. It was, suffice to say, quite a shocking sight.

Tim recovered first, bounding in and plucking a piping hot piece of pizza from the box. "Can we play?"

Bruce and Clark shrugged, and ate pizza without looking at it. Tim and Dick took two more controllers from the box and sat on the floor with the pizza between them. A few minutes later Alfred peeked in, smiled at the sight of the four boys all trying to beat each other at their silly game, and went to make the most of this rare peace and quiet.

"Ha!" Bruce exclaimed. Clark groand as poorly rendered intestines splattered across the screen. Bruce set the controller down on the arm of the couch and stretched. "Where'd the boys go to?"

"Out on patrol." Clark tossed the empty pizza box into the trash.

"Patrol? But it's only—" Bruce grabbed the clock off the end table. "My god, how did it get to be eleven o'clock?"

"Time flies when you're having fun," Clark said. "Hey, Wally said that he'd loan us _Halo_ tomorrow."

Bruce didn't seem that opposed to the idea, but he grabbed the pair of crutches leaning against the wall and got up. "Don't you have a job?"

"It's a weekend. Normal people don't work weekends." Clark saw him yawn and grinned. "And anyway, I didn't want you and Alfred killing each other. So—tomorrow?"

"Sure," Bruce said, with an apathetic shrug. "What else is there to do?"


	2. Drunk II

**A/N: **** The original Drunk was in my second series of one-shots, but I wanted to flip it and see what happened…**

~Drunk II~

It was the middle of the night, and someone was pounding on Bruce's door. Normally he wouldn't even be sleeping in the Watchtower but he been damn tired and so of course they had to bother him now.

He hit the button to open the door, ready to kill slowly whoever was on the other side, and found Superman leaning against the doorframe, pointing a finger at him.

"I've _had_ it," he said, quite drunkenly.

Bruce, for all of his usual composure, just stared.

Clark let himself in, or more so fell in, as it was more Bruce's desk holding him up now than his own two feet. "I've tried. I have. You have to admit it. You're the problem."

"Clark, I don't have a clue what you're talking about." Bruce recovered quickly and shut the door behind them, so he could at least figure out what the hell was going on here. Clark plopped down on the kitchen chair, mercifully without falling off of it, and glared sullenly at him.

"I _tried_," he repeated.

"So I heard." Bruce wondered if there was such a thing as a Kryptonian hangover cure, because Clark was sure going to need it. "I didn't know you could get drunk."

Clark frowned. "The alien lady gave me something and it tasted funny—Hey! You're trying to distract me!"

"From _what_?" Bruce was practically shouting.

"From what I was sayin!" Clark flopped against the table. Bruce leaned against the wall and just watched the spectacle. "I've been _nice_. I've been _really nice_. And you're a grouchy-pants."

Bruce's eyebrows jumped so high that they nearly shot off of his forehead.

"I though' we were friends," Clark muttered, and put his head down on the table.

Bruce sighed and took the other chair. "We're friends, Clark." He wondered how the hell he'd gotten to the point where he was telling an alien that they were friends at one a.m. in a space ship.

"Are you sure? _Sure-sure_?" Clark looked up at him from the table. "Cause I don't think you like me a' all."

"And why do you think that, Clark?" Bruce asked, and resisted sighing again.

"I told you, you're never nice!" Clark was waving his arms around in the air, while Bruce was thinking increasingly uncharitable thoughts. "I smile. I make conversation with you on monitor duty. And all you do is growl at me."

"Oh, yes, I'm the bad friend." Bruce rolled his eyes. If Clark wanted to have this argument, then fine, they would have this argument. "How about this—whenever you and Lois get in a tiff I listen to you whine about it and make you tea. Whenever Diana's angry with me you just tell me I should knock it off."

"Someone has to," Clark said, and suddenly put his arms around his stomach. "_Ooh…_that stuff really wasn't good."

"I swear to God, if you throw up, you are cleaning it up," Bruce snapped. Clark whimpered. Bruce put his head in his hands for just a second, because he hadn't slept in four days, dammit, and went and got Clark an aspirin and a glass of water. "Take this."

"I don't wanna."

"Take it, Clark!"

Clark obeyed, then went back to having his head on the table and mumbling about how Bruce had to smile more. To which Bruce wondered if it was assault to bludgeon a drunken Kryptonian with a kryptonite nine iron.

"I'd settle for a hello, once in awhile," he murmured.

"Hello, Clark." Bruce did not think he would have patience for this much longer.

"I'm bein' serious."

"Yes, drunk people are so serious," Bruce said. "It's ridiculous to even have this conversation."

"Why?"

"_Because you're ass-flat drunk, Clark!_"

Clark looked at him and the corners of his mouth turned down a little, like he was actually hurt. He staggered up from the chair and lurched towards the door. "I oughta go. I'm sorry."

Bruce tried, for a good minute or so, to just let him go and stumble down the hallway and make an utter fool of himself. But ultimately he couldn't do it (or maybe just didn't want to deal with an angry Diana _and_ Lois), so he grabbed Clark by the arm and dragged him over to the couch. "Lie down. You're going to go to sleep, and I am too."

Clark sat down on the couch and stared at him melancholically.

"Take off your boots and your cape."

Clark didn't respond.

Bruce grumbled, knelt down, tugged the boots off Clark's feet then sat down next to him to reach the clasps on the back of the cape. Clark put his head down on Bruce's shoulder.

Bruce glared murder at him.

"Do you really like me?" Clark asked, snuggled up against Bruce.

"It is the only reason you are not dead right now." Bruce tried to push him off. He didn't budge. "Honestly, Clark, what did you expect? Drinks on Wednesday nights? Watching _Indiana Jones _together? Because then you obviously do not know me at all."

"You could come to Smallville with me when Ma asks," Clark mumbled, his eyes half-closed and drooping. "She like you, you know, and you're not nice to her either."

"I am too nice to your mother." Bruce rubbed his eyes. Now _he_ was starting to get a headache. "Fine, Clark. Next time your mother asks, I'll come. Will that make you happy?"

"Uh-huh," Clark said.

"I ought to get Friend of the Year award for not kicking you out, you know," Bruce said. But Clark was snoring softly against his shoulder. Bruce shook his head at no one in particular, shoved Clark over so he was lying on his side on the couch (just in case he did puke) and tossed a blanket over him.

Then he finally got to go to bed.

"My head hurts."

Bruce pried his eyes open to see Superman standing over him, capeless and holding his head in his hands. Bruce turned over in bed and tried to ignore him. "Go take ten or twenty painkillers and leave me alone."

"Why was I on your couch? Bruce, I don't remember anything."

"Drugs are bad, Clark. Next time nice alien ladies give you things, don't drink them."

Clark groaned.

"You make a very whiny drunk," Bruce said, and gave up trying to go back to sleep. "Also, we're friends, as apparently you needed that cleared up."

Clark stared at him for a minute, then smiled. "You admit it?"

"What is this, middle school?" Bruce asked. "Clark, I've let you drink _coffee_ in the _Batmobile_. If that isn't a declaration of trust I don't know what is."

Clark grinned, then winced again. "Where's the aspirin?"

"In the medicine cabinet." Bruce got up and found the kettle hidden under the sink. "Do you want tea?"

"Aw…you do care."

"Shut up, Kent."


	3. Tell

A/N: I had Wally and Kara get together in chapter 19 of my first series of one-shots.

~Tale~

"Why can't you two just get along for more than a day?" Clark found himself dangerously close to shouting. "First you two start arguing, then _someone_ decides to escalate things and next thing I know the cafeteria is on fire."

"I'm not an idiot," Bruce said. "Obviously _I_ didn't set the cafeteria on fire. The only reason I'm still listening to you is out of politeness."

Clark resisted the urge to strangle him.

"The fact _is_," he said through gritted teeth, "you could stand to be a little nicer and a little less obsessive and then maybe _he_ wouldn't feel the need to annoy you all the time."

"See, Bats?" Wally grinned. "It isn't my fault."

"And you." Clark pointed his finger at him. "You need to stop feeling the need to put gummy worms and smoke bombs everywhere just to lighten the mood."

By this point Bruce was letting the lecture wash over him meaninglessly. The seconds ticked by on the clock. He wondered how much longer this lecture was going to last, because by god he had work to do.

Aannddd….Clark was still talking.

"I'm leaving," Bruce said, and turned to go.

Clark grabbed him the cape. "Oh no, you don't. You are going to go and help clean up the cafeteria with Wally."

Bruce sighed. Time to use the ammunition he'd been saving. "If I were you'd I'd worry less about Wally wrecking the cafeteria and more about him dating your cousin."

Several things happened in slow motion. Clark stared, his mouth dropped open, his face turned a shade of red that could only be described as "tomato" and turned to Wally with a look like murder. Wally saw it and bolted fast enough to make the air crackle.

Clark pulled Bruce close to him. "_What_ did you say?"

"Wally. Is. Dating. Your. Cousin," Bruce said it very deliberately and slowly so that he would get to leave after this.

Clark stayed still for just one more second, then he looked left and bolted to Kansas at nearly the speed of sound.

Kara was sitting in her bedroom at her desk with physics homework, doodling "Mrs. Kara West" in the margins with a little lightning bolt underneath. She felt a sudden gust of wind, and then she was elevated 14,000 feet above Kansas.

"What the hel—_heck_, Kal?" she asked, pulling back.

"You're dating Wally!" he yelled. "_Wally!_"

"So?" Kara crossed her arms. "It isn't any of your business who I date."

"He's too old for you."

"I'm seventeen. He's nineteen. Last I checked, Lois was two and a half years younger than you." Kara glared at him. "Maybe you shouldn't date someone with such a hhuuugggeee age difference."

"You are not allowed to date Wally." Clark glared right back.

"You're not my father." Kara was a little too old to give him a warning blast of heat vision (not that it would hurt him anyway) but she did let her eyes go red. "And you can't tell me who to date."

"Ma can," Clark said.

"She likes Wally," Kara said. "It's not like he's a gangster or a supervillain or anything."

"He's—" Clark began, and bit his tongue. "He's not right for you."

"He's what?" Kara asked, sensing a way to win this argument. "Do you not think Wally is smart, Kal? Or good enough for me? He did help you guys win the White Martian Invasion. He's one of the original seven. Are you saying he isn't good enough for me?"

"That isn't what I said!" Clark said. "But I just don't think that Wally acts very mature sometimes. And I'm putting my foot down."

Kara rolled her eyes at him. "Oh, bite me."

Then she turned on her heel and flew back down to the farm. Kal would just have to get over it.

Wally was hiding in his room. In retrospect, it wasn't the best of hiding spots. After all, he hadn't even left the Watchtower. He just hoped that maybe Superman wouldn't hit a complete murderous rage.

Someone knocked on the door, not quite politely.

Wally, sitting on the bed, just stared at it.

"I know you're in there," Clark snapped from the other side. "I swear, open up this door or I am going to go and take the door codes from Bruce. You know I will, Wally."

Wally gulped and opened the door.

Clark grabbed him by the arm, dragged him to the table, and slammed him into the chair. "You are not to date Kara."

"But I like her!" Wally said.

"I don't care!" Clark was utterly exasperated, and suddenly understood why Bruce was always so frumpy around Wally. "You are not dating my cousin! I said no—she's still in _high school_. You had better break up with her, or else."

"Or else what?" Wally asked, not sarcastically, but actually fearful. Clark felt just the tiniest bit bad.

"Or else you'll have to deal with a very angry Superman," he said, and Wally nodded.

Just for one day, Bruce wished that he could get through his work without having someone barge in and bug him about their problems. Just one day without anyone annoying him. Especially teenage Kryptonians wailing about their relationship issues.

"You have to help me!" Kara whined, floating above him blocking his examination table where he had all the evidence from a double murder laid out.

"Why?" Bruce asked. "I honestly don't give a damn about you and your boyfriend or lack thereof."

"Because it's _all your fault_!" Kara yelled. "Wally wouldn't tell me why he wanted to break up, but I went and watched the security tapes and _you_ told Clark that we were dating. And then Clark got mad at me, and I don't know what he said to Wally but he said _something_."

"Just go get a different boyfriend," Bruce said. "From what I understand, high school girls usually operate on a flavor of the week model."

"I'm not a slut!" Kara shrieked. Bruce winced at the sheer octave level. Her eyes went threat red. "You had better help me."

"You think you can scare me?" Bruce practically chuckled. "I've had to deal with your cousin on red kryptonite."

Kara stared at him. Her lower lip trembled. Her baby blue eyes welled up with tears. Bruce looked horrified. She started sniffling.

Bruce backed away. "Don't do that."

Kara sniffled and let a single droplet streak down her cheek. "I just want my boyfriend back!" Then she started crying.

"Stop," Bruce said. "I'll help you, okay? I'll talk to Clark. Please, for the love of god, stop doing that."

"You will?" Kara asked. The tears instantly dried. She grinned and flew towards the entrance of the cave. "Thanks, Batman!"

Bruce groaned and hit the button that would teleport him up to the Watchtower.

Bruce knocked on the door and walked in before Clark had the chance to answer. "We need to talk. Specifically—go tell Wally he can date Kara."

Clark looked at him. "Would it kill you to call before you showed up at my apartment?"

"Yes." Bruce shut the door behind him, walked up to Clark, and took the laptop he was using off his desk from right under his hands. "Now then—go tell Wally he's fine and you can get this back."

"No." Clark grabbed the computer back from him. Bruce actually looked a tad surprised. "Wally is not dating Kara."

Bruce sighed. "Haven't you ever heard that telling kids they can't do something will only make them want to do it more?"

"I don't care. It isn't going to happen." Clark smacked his laptop down on his desk and went back to working, deliberately ignoring Bruce.

"Because Wally's an idiot?" Bruce asked.

Clark winced. "Well…yeah."

Bruce sat down on the couch and wished that there were an easier way to do this. Finally, he just said it. "Wally isn't an idiot."

Clark raised an eyebrow. "He _did_ set the cafeteria on fire."

"Yeah," Bruce shrugged. "But he's a decent kid. There are worse people to for Kara to hang out with, even in the Teen Titans. Like Beast Boy. Now _there's_ an idiot."

"I don't know," Clark said. "Wally can be kind of fickle sometimes. I don't want to see him hurt Kara."

"This is the guy who followed Diana around for two years no matter how many times I growled at him," Bruce reminded him. "And Kara's a teenager. It's not like they're going to get married."

"I suppose you're right." Clark stopped talking. "So I guess I should go apologize."

"You should." Bruce stood up. "And tell Kara she is never allowed in the Batcave again. Ever."

"Oh." Clark looked sheepish. "Jeez. What'd she have to do to convince _you_ to help her?"

Bruce shook his head. "Let's not talk about it, alright? Just go let Wally back at your cousin and we'll all be better off."

Clark, much to his own surprise, couldn't find a good reason to disagree.


	4. Quandary

A/N: A little midweek bonus chapter, here! I wanted to see if I could manage a satisfying one-shot in under 500 words. I don't entirely love it so it won't be my weekly update.

~Quandary~

Bruce had successfully escaped the medbay.

He ached from the beating he'd taken (when would S.T.A.R. Labs learn how to keep control of their giant killer robots?) and he probably wasn't doing his sprained knee any favors. But there was no way he was going to let J'onn hold him there. He had work to do—he'd survived plenty of mild concussions and bruised ribs before, and he'd do it again.

Maybe after he caught Poison Ivy and finished analyzing the evidence from last week's double murder he would crawl into bed for a few hours' sleep with a handful of aspirin and a good number of ice packs.

He was deep in thoughts of gunshot wound angles, and nearly ran straight into Clark.

"Aren't you supposed to be asleep in the medbay?" Clark gave him a look of utter disapproval and Bruce groaned.

Bruce crossed his arms, despite his protesting bruises. "I have things to do."

Clark sighed. "Will you answer me something honestly?"

"What." Bruce was not in the mood for these games, but if it got Clark to shut up then fine.

"Who are you trying to impress?" Clark asked.

Bruce blinked at him.

"See, you've known me for eight years. I doubt you care what I think." Clark was x-raying him, he could tell. "And despite that thing you've got with Di I doubt you really worry about she thinks of you, or else you wouldn't keep stringing her on. Flash will be both awed and frightened by you no matter what you do."

"I don't know what you're getting at," Bruce said.

"Just follow along." Clark walked with him towards the teleporter room. "You and GL have camaraderie, but he'd be telling you to get some rest, too. You and Hawkgirl don't seem to care about each other one way or another."

"And," Clark continued, pointedly, "J'onn would be able to see through whatever bullshit you put up, no matter how good your telepath defenses are. Something you seem to mildly dislike him for, I might add."

Bruce stopped walking and glared at him. Clark smiled knowingly.

"So I ask you again," Clark said. "Who are you trying to impress?"

Bruce held his gaze for a good fifteen seconds before he finally let his shoulders slump. "All right. I'll go to bed. But I'm not going back to the medbay."

Clark shrugged. "Good enough for me."

It wasn't until Bruce was in his room, under the covers with lovely painkillers coursing through his system and ice against his sore ribs that he had the passing fancy that he ought to listen to Clark more often.


	5. Pink

**A/N**: I almost didn't write this one, but it kept going around and around in my head so I wrote it. It's, well, weird and crack!fic-y. I haven't tried oddball-y before and I'm not sure if I'd do it again. I am not responsible for any mental torment.

Also, I'd love to get some prompts! I have the next one written and am working on one (a Ma Kent fic, which takes me some doing) but after that I don't know what to try next. Perhaps my fellow geeks have some wonderful plotbunnies?

**~Pink~**

Bruce was sitting on monitor duty, running over the evidence from a murder-suicide last night, when Diana came running in with her hair all askew. "Bruce! Thank goodness! Have you seen Clark?"

"No." Bruce looked at her over the grisly autopsy photos. "Why?"

"We were on a mission and he got hit with some weird sort of Kryptonite." Diana paused to take a breath. "And he seemed fine but started acting funny on the way back and when we got here he vanished."

"Do you have a sample of the kryptonite?" he asked. Diana nodded and handed him a small baggie from her pocket. He peered at the tiny gem shard. "Well that's awfully…pink."

"That's what I said." They both looked at the odd little piece for a minute. "You stay here and watch the cameras. I'll go looking for him."

Diana left. Bruce turned on the Watchtower security cameras and started scanning for Superman's comlink signature. He found it lying on the floor in the main hall. Damn.

The door opened behind him. "I haven't found him yet, Di, any luck?"

"Bruce!"

He turned around to see Clark standing in the doorway with a giant, goofy smile on his face. "Are you feeling all right? Diana said you got hit with krypt—"

Clark bounded up to Bruce, nearly knocked him off of his chair, and kissed him full on the mouth.

Bruce kicked him on the stomach and leapt away to the other side of the room. "_What the hell is wrong with you!_"

"I love you," Clark said, with that same ridiculous grin on his face.

Bruce's jaw dropped. He was pretty sure his expression was something between horror and disbelief. "No, Clark. Absolutely not. This is the kryptonite. I do not know why on earth it would do this to you, but apparently it is, so if we could all just keep out wits about us…"

Clark started coming towards him. Bruce backed against the wall.

The door opened.

"Diana!" Clark practically shrieked, in a sweetie-pie voice that made Bruce's blood run cold.

"Oh no you don't. I'm willing to forgive you attacking me, but _not_ my girlfriend," Bruce said, and punched Superman square in the jaw. "_Ow!_"

"Did you break your hand?" Diana stared at both of them, still utterly confused as to what the hell was going on.

"No I didn't break my hand!" Bruce shouted though he was indeed holding his right hand in his left. "Would you please worry less about me and more about _the horny alien in our midst_?"

"What?" Diana said, just as Clark kissed her too (which meant steam could practically be seen coming out of Bruce's pointy ears).

Then he threw his arms around the both of them and gazed at them adorningly. "Hey, why don't we—."

"I don't think we need an end to that sentence." Diana pushed Clark so hard that he flew backward into the supply closet. Together Bruce and Diana slammed the door shut on him.

"Guys…" Clark whined, pounding on the door as Diana pushed a desk in front of it. "I just want to _play_."

"That is so creepy," Diana said.

Bruce sighed, leaning against the desk. "And just when I think my life can't possibly get any weirder, some shit like this happens."

"What are we going to do?" she asked. "How do you even cure kryptonite poisoning?"

"You can't," Bruce replied. "You remove the rock and the effects wear off."

"How long?"

"Anywhere from fifteen minutes to a week or so, depending on the type or length of exposure. How long was he near it for?"

Diana shrugged. "An hour? Hour and a half? We didn't realize what it was at first, not until I scanned it. It was _pink_—we certainly didn't expect kryptonite."

"I'm estimating around a day or two then," Bruce said, watching the supply closet door warily.

"We can't keep a sex-crazed Superman locked in a closet for two days!" Diana threw her hands in the air. "And I don't think Clark would appreciate us letting anyone else see him in this…condition."

Bruce sat up straighter and snapped his fingers. "Diana! That's brilliant!"

She looked at him. "What is?"

But Bruce was at the monitor with a phone to his ear, calling someone in Metropolis.

Ten minutes later, Lois Lane arrived in the monitor bay, beamed up by the transporter in a ray of blue light. She blinked, patted her hair to make sure it was still in place, and asked, "Clark's in trouble, isn't he?"

"Sort of," Bruce said. "But also sort of not."

"I'm confused," Lois said. "Why did you drag me up here?"

"Clark was exposed to a new sort of kryptonite." Diana attempted an explanation. "And while it's not a danger to him, per se…it's made him rather…well…"

"Horny," Bruce said. "Manically so."

"What?"

"He kissed me," Bruce explained, with what he hoped was a somewhat neutral expression, "—and then her, and then I think he proposed a threesome."

"Oh my god," Lois said.

"Yes." Diana grabbed her by the shoulder and thrust her into the closet. "So you need to get in there. Now."

Lois squeaked as the door shut. Then Clark practically yelped "Lois!" and there was a lot of banging. The door opened then shut at superspeed, and all Bruce caught was a pair of red, blue, and flesh-colored blurs.

"Where did they just go?" Diana asked.

Bruce checked the monitor. "Clark's room. And the camera's turned off."

"Well," Diana said, slumping against the computer. "That was interesting. Hey—I don't suppose that stuff works on pointy-eared human men?"

Bruce gave her a look.

Eight hours later, Bruce and Diana were sitting in the B Annex kitchen. Diana was having breakfast and Bruce was finishing sending evidence to Nightwing and Oracle. Someone started giggling outside the door. Then it opened and Lois tumbled in, disheveled, with her suit jacket buttoned on the wrong button and sans mascara. She and Clark stood in front of the fridge and made out.

Bruce cleared his throat. Clark gave him an annoyed look. "Are you still hopped up on K, Clark?"

"Maybe a little." Clark gazed adoringly into Lois's eyes. "What happened last night?"

Bruce and Diana gave each other a look. "You hit on us."

"_Both_ of you?" Clark asked, looking quite aghast.

"Yes," Bruce said. "Though I think we'd both prefer it if it were never brought up again."

"Well I had a _wonderful_ night." Lois half dropped, half-collapsed onto the chair next to Diana. "Perhaps I should get a piece of that pink K for myself, eh, Clark?"

"_Lois!_" Clark exclaimed, scandalized, nearly dropping the eggs he'd been about to crack into a frying pan.

She sighed. "Yeah, it's worn off, hasn't it."

Diana stood up, looking at Bruce. "Well, we'll leave you to alone…right, Bruce?"

"Sure." He got up and followed her out the door. They were alone in the hallway. Diana slipped her arm through his.

"Are you finished with your work?"

"For the moment, but I've—"

"Be quiet," Diana snapped, and glared at him. "How come Lois gets all the fun?"

He blinked at her. Diana sighed and grabbed the collar of his cape, pulling him close. "Do I have to throw you into a supply closet to get some of my own?"

"Um," he said.

"Let's try this another way." Diana let him go. "You're going to make dinner reservations for us, preferably somewhere French or Italian with candles, and then you will pick me up at seven. Got it?"

Bruce nodded. Diana smiled sweetly and left.

Clark emerged from the kitchen with lipstick on his face. He sighed happily. "I think that may have been the best case of kryptonite poisoning I've ever had."

Bruce snorted. "Personally, I prefer the green."


	6. Persuasion

A/N: Thanks to Joe Stoppinghem for this prompt!

~Talk~

Bruce dumped the juice glasses into the sink. He could hear Clark laughing at something in the living room, and sighed. This was a _real_ productive meeting. Maybe if they'd been able to meet in the conference room, they could have gotten further than pizza and Wally's bad jokes.

But this was what he got for letting Zatanna keep her cursed scarabs in the Watchtower: Dr. Fate having to magically fumigate the place. And hence, instead of a conference room they had Ma Kent's kitchen.

"I'll take care of those, dear."

Speak of the devil. He turned the water on scalding and started filling the sink. "I don't mind helping out."

"Nonsense," Ma said. "I'll just have Clark do them—the boy'll whizz through it in a few seconds. Go back to the living room—there's an empty seat next to Diana."

He looked through the doorway. Diana saw him and patted the spot next to her on the couch. Good god—they were in cahoots now.

"Well, we can't make Clark do everything." Bruce put the plates in and rolled up his sleeves, hoping she'd let him go now. "Even if he is a boy scout and all."

"She's such a nice girl," Ma said.

Bruce almost broke a glass in frustration, but just grit his teeth, and tried to smile. He was pretty sure he ended up looking like a jackal. "Yes, she's quite pleasant to work with."

"Mmm." Ma leaned against the counter next to the sink. She was two feet shorter than him, but when she fixed him with that motherly disappointment he inwardly flinched. "Bruce, indulge an old woman. What _is _between you and Diana?"

"We're colleagues," he said. "Which is something I've told Clark many a time, as well. Frankly, I don't understand the family interest."

"Well, Clark tries to be friendly," she said. "And as for me—well, when you reach a certain age you're entitled to some matchmaking."

"We're _just_ colleagues."

Ma made the small _mm_ sound again like she didn't quite believe him. Bruce washed dishes, hoping that maybe if he ignored her for long enough she would go to the living room and giggle about him with Diana or something. Whatever—just so long as he didn't have to hear it.

Instead, she crossed her arms and looked at him again, like a thought had just occurred to her. "Are you gay?"

Bruce dropped the plate he was holding. "_Excuse me_?"

"Well, dear, you've been seen with an awful lot of very beautiful women. And as well as I hope I've raised Clark, I know that if he'd had even a fraction of them he'd have jumped to get a ring on one," Ma said. "Most men would. So either you've got your heart set on someone, dear, or it isn't women you're interested in."

Bruce rubbed his temples. Every time he stepped foot in the Kent household he regretted it. "Mrs. Kent. I assure you, the only reason I don't have a steady girlfriend is because I have neither the time nor the life for one."

"So Diana, princess of a warrior race, can't take care of herself?" Ma raised an eyebrow. "And to think you let that red-haired girl gallivant around with you in a bat-costume."

"My enemies are a lot more psychotic than any she has to deal with on a regular basis." Bruce slammed the plate into the dish drainer. Ma _tsked_ at him and arranged it nicely amongst the others.

"Yes, I'm sure it would be quite difficult with her invulnerability, magic lasso, and assorted powers." Ma nonchalantly started drying the glasses off with a dishtowel. "Did you know that the Amazons keep kraken in their swimming hole? Diana told me she caught one when she was eight."

"How fascinating," Bruce replied.

"Quite."

Bruce, unfortunately, reached the last plate. He was intent on washing it six times over, if that's what it took, but Ma snatched it from him, dried it, and tossed it in the cupboard.

"Now go join the others," she said. "I think there's some sausage pizza left."

He admitted defeat and went to the living room. The only seat left was next to Diana and it would look just as weird if he'd refused to sit anywhere but the floor. As soon as he'd gotten himself a slice of pizza and sat down, she laid her hand on his knee.

"What where you and Mrs. Kent talking about?" she asked.

He shrugged. "I just helped her with the dishes."

Diana made that same damn _mmm_ sound.

Clark and Wally were arguing about some band he'd never heard of. John and Shayera were making goo-goo eyes at each other from separate sofas. J'onn was playing with the cat. Bruce leaned away from Diana and tried to calculate the shortest time it would be socially appropriate to stay.

Ma was watching them from the kitchen, a small knowing smile on her face.

Diana was saying something to him.

"What?" he turned back to her.

"Are you going to be at the Gotham Charity Ball?" she asked. "That odd girl who's hosting it this year invited me. Perhaps you could suffer one dance together?"

It occurred to him what she must have had to do to wrangle a kraken. And her hand felt very nice where it was resting on his leg. Before he'd really considered what he was going to say, the words jumped out of his mouth. "If you want, I'll pick you up at six and we can get dinner first."

Her smile practically glowed. For as much as his rational brain was kicking him right now, he couldn't help but put his arm around her.

* * *

><p>He was trying to put on his coat, and Clark was giggling at him.<p>

"What?" he snapped.

Clark stopped with the laughter and tried his best to look calm. "Did you break that plate?"

"What plate?" Bruce asked without really listening, because he did not have time for this. He had to go on patrol _and_ endure Alfred's subtle ribbing about the fact that he had a date.

"The one you dropped." Clark couldn't help it anymore and laughed.

"I hate your super-hearing," Bruce said, resisting the urge to throw Clark's boots out into the snow. "And your mother needs to let me be."

Clark clapped him on the back. "Someone has to talk some sense into you. You don't listen to me."

Bruce sighed. "For good reason."

Just then Diana came through the foyer, coat already on. When she passed Bruce she leaned in and said, "I'm looking very forward to next week. I have the perfect red dress." He swallowed.

After she was out the door, Clark poked him. "You really ought to see the look on your face, Bruce. Why, if I didn't know you better I'd say it was almost a smile."

Bruce shook his head derisively. "Please. It was a favor."

Then he left, because the batsignal was probably getting switched on right about now. And he had to ask Alfred to order a new suit for next week. Something that went with red.


	7. Marriage

A/N: Ma and Alfred got together in the last chapter of my second series of one-shots. It seems this series is focusing on a lot of plot points I'd wanted to go back to.

Oh, and this one is cotton-candy sweet. Just a warning.

~Jealousy~

"We'd like to tell you all something." Ma was beaming, standing in the Wayne Manor living room with Alfred's arm around her. Bruce, Clark, Dick and Tim were assembled on the couch. Ma and Alfred smiled at each other lovingly. "We're getting married!"

"Yeah!" Tim shouted, leaping off the couch to hug the two. Clark and Dick followed suit, grinning. Even Bruce stood up, behind the others, and nodded to Alfred. "You couldn't have made a better choice."

"Speaking of choices," Alfred said. "Master Bruce, as Mister Clark is giving away the bride, I was hoping you would be the best man."

All eyes focused on Bruce. It took him a conspicuous moment to respond. Finally though, he took a breath and made an attempt at a smile. "Well…well of course! I'd be honored."

"Oh Alfie," Martha sighed. "It's going to be wonderful."

* * *

><p>"Put that down!" Bruce snapped, taking a microscope from Clark. The Kryptonian and his mother had been showing up an uncomfortable number of times since the engagement announcement. And Alfred, even more annoyingly, had not always been around when he was wanted. "That's a delicate instrument."<p>

"You're cranky lately." Clark shook his head at him. "Ma and Alfred have coffee ready, if you want any. Snacks, too."

"Do I have a choice?" Bruce murmured, his attention more focused on the bloodstained shards of glass he was piecing together with tweezers.

"Not really."

Bruce stood up from the chair and followed Clark upstairs. Alfred was putting out cookies and Ma was slicing a pie. Bruce took a cookie, but not any pie. Ma looked at him. "Won't you have a slice?"

"No thank you," Bruce said, evenly. "I don't much like your apple pie. Too mushy."

Ma nearly dropped her knife. She tried to smile but looked positively hurt. Clark's mouth opened and shut. Alfred smacked his plate down on the table. "Master Bruce! That was uncalled for."

Bruce shrugged. "You're always the one telling me not to lie to people." It was the first time Alfred had chastised him in years. Bruce held his butler's disappointed gaze and popped the cookie in his mouth.

* * *

><p>A few weeks later Bruce woke up at six in the morning and sensed something was out of place. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and stumbled down into the cave. Alfred was leaning against the examination table, gloves on and tweezers in hand. Clark sat on the table, head in his hands, with dark blood pouring down his right arm.<p>

"Now hold still, Mister Clark. Those shards will come out in no time." Alfred carefully extracted the bits of yellow and green kryptonite from the gashes across Clark's shoulder and back. "And then we shall have some tea, yes?"

"What's going on?" Bruce snapped. Both Alfred and Clark jumped.

"Mister Clark got himself into a spot of trouble." Alfred pulled out the sutures from his medical kit and began stitching Clark up. Bitterly, Bruce wondered why he was bothering. It wasn't like he would take days to heal.

"So you were being an idiot again." Bruce smacked Clark's injured shoulder, making him moan.

Alfred pushed him away. "Master Bruce. Perhaps you need some sleep. Or some fresh air. Now."

And then Bruce's butler turned back to tending to Clark, and away from him. Bruce went back up the stairs.

* * *

><p>The final straw was dinner. They were all supposed to be eating together. In the interest of family and whatnot. The wedding was in a month. And Bruce was late for dinner.<p>

He was walking home across the yard. The kitchen curtains were thrown open, people moving around inside. Bruce paused, ankle-deep in snow, and watched as Alfred placed a perfectly roasted chicken on the kitchen table. They _never_ ate at the kitchen table.

Then again, Bruce thought, he couldn't remember the last time he'd bothered pausing a case to eat. Tim and Dick were sitting on one side of the round table, Martha and Alfred next to each other as well. And Clark had taken his seat.

Bruce hit the button on his com. "Mr. Terrific. Please teleport me up."

* * *

><p>Someone knocked on the door of his room. Bruce looked up from his work and debated whether to answer it or not. It was Clark, most certainly, coming to give him another lecture.<p>

The door opened. Clark was certainly angry if he was deferring politeness in favor of yelling at him.

"You didn't come to dinner last night," Clark said as the door eased shut, with barely concealed annoyance.

"I didn't want to." Bruce didn't make eye contact, which he knew drove Clark made.

"You're acting like an insufferable brat," Clark snapped. So they were getting right to it, this time. "You're barely being polite to me, outright ignore Ma, and apparently haven't had a civil word with your own surrogate father for a week."

"I don't have time for this," Bruce replied.

"Dammit!" Clark slammed his hand down on the desk. "What's wrong with you?"

"Nothing's wrong with me." Bruce slapped close the laptop. "But you apparently have an ager management problem."

Clark took a deep breath and rubbed his temples. "Bruce, we're friends…I think. So I want you to just answer me one thing and then you can go back to being your antagonistic self. Do you not want Alfred and Martha getting married?"

"Why wouldn't I?" Bruce asked. "Of course I'd want Alfred to be happy."

"You say that like you're not sure." Clark sat on the bed next to him—Bruce reflexively scooted away.

"Of course I'm sure!" Bruce's voice rose. "Maybe you're the one who's uneasy about this. After all, your father's only been dead two years. I've had two decades to adjust to Alfred as a father figure. You're bound to still have daddy issues."

"Ah," Clark murmured, with a small smile. "So that's what this about."

"Nothing to be ashamed of," Bruce said, and went to get back to working.

"I'm not going to replace you as Alfred's son, Bruce."

The hands on the keyboard paused for just a moment. "That doesn't worry me in the slightest."

"Really." Clark looked at him. "You've had twenty years—you say so yourself—to start thinking of Alfred as Dad. And you don't have the slightest twinge of—I don't know—jealousy for the fact that he'll be my stepfather?"

"Not at all." Bruce mistyped _city_ as_ citu_ and his mouth thinned to a pencil line as he bashed the Delete key.

"Ma adores you, you know. Possibly slightly less since you've started acting like this, but still." Clark put his arm around Bruce's shoulders. Bruce glared at him but didn't do anything more about it. "And according to Tim, this means we're practically brothers."

"No, because Alfred isn't my father and you're a somewhat-illegally adopted alien," Bruce said, though not angrily.

"Oh, stop being ornery." Clark was smiling. Bruce closed the laptop again, and set it aside. "Now are you coming to dinner tonight? Hopefully with intentions of apologizing to Ma and Alfred?"

Bruce hesitated.

"Can't miss Ma's pot roast," Clark prodded, elbowing him. "Or Alfred's lemon merengue pie. Practically a mortal sin if you do."

Bruce smiled a bit at that, but then he picked his coffee mug up off the nightstand. "I do have work to do, you know."

"Mm-hmm." Clark reached over and took the mug from him before he could protest. "And you shouldn't drink so much of that stuff. It's bad for you."

"Last I checked, you weren't in charge of me." Bruce glared.

"Yes, but I'm six months older than you." Clark drank the last half-cup himself in one gulp. "And by my standards, that makes you my _little_ brother. Hence, I'm allowed to tell you what to do."

"You are not," Bruce snapped. "They're not even married yet!"

"_You are not_," Clark repeated, in an annoyingly whiny and petulant voice.

Clark and Bruce looked at each other, and burst into laughter. Bruce snatched back the empty cup, looked into it as if he was expecting more coffee to magically appear. When it didn't he tossed it across the floor. "Dinner, then?"

"After you." Clark got up and gestured to the door. Almost begrudgingly, Bruce followed him through it.


	8. Valentine

A/N: Okay, so it's late, but this just popped into my head and begged to be written.

~Valentine~

Clark was about to get into the teleporter. He'd planned the perfect dinner for him and Lois, and even snagged the opal earrings she'd been eyeing (not that she'd told him—superhearing around Valentine's Day was the only type of spying he indulged in). He was a happy man.

Until a crazy-eyed, out-of-costume Bruce grabbed him by the cape and practically dragged him off the teleporter pad. There were red slashes (blood?) all over his face and he kept scratching at them like crazy. He held Clark by the collar and practically screamed, "Where is Mxyzptlk?"

Clark stared at him. "He's not here. I just sent him back to his dimension a few weeks ago…and what is that stuff on your face?"

"There has to be a way to bring him back! There has to!" Bruce shook him.

"I've never _wanted_ to bring him back." Clark peered closer. "Is that lipstick? Bruce, what the hell were you doing? That's like half a tube of makeup. And you look…" He didn't want to say _insane_. "…unhappy for a man with lipstick marks on his face."

"Bat-mite wanted to give me a Valentine's present." Bruce collapsed onto the bench on the side of the room. "So he made me irresistible to women. As in, dozens of them were _jumping me_ on the street."

Clark noticed the tears in his clothes, which were exactly the size manicured nails would make. It was very, very hard to keep a straight face. He coughed to cover up a chuckle.

"It's not funny!" Bruce practically wailed. "Have you ever had two eighty-year-old women try to rip your pants off? Because I just did!"

Clark got that picture in his head and burst into laughter. Bruce gave him a look like hotblooded murder. "Oh god, Bruce, I'm sorry. But that…that's hilarious. How did no one notice you getting molested by seniors?"

"Apparently part of Bat-Mite's spell or hex or fucking-whatever was amnesia for everyone who gets outside of fifteen feet of me." Bruce rubbed his face, trying to scrub off the lipstick.

"You are helping me fix this." Bruce stood up in a flash, yanked Clark's arm and marched them off out the door. "We're going to find Bat-Mite. He's around here somewhere. Sneaking around watching me in transdimensional space." He stopped in the middle of the hallway and shook his fist at the ceiling. "_Do you hear that?_ I know you're up there! _I know it!_"

Booster Gold and Blue Beetle froze and stared at them. Clark made a little cuckoo signal around his ear and mouthed _concussion_ to them. They nodded and scurried away.

Then Hawkgirl turned down the hall. She was reading from a tablet, but as soon as she'd gotten a few feet in her face went blank and the tablet slipped from her hand. She leapt onto Bruce, knocking him to the ground and slathering kisses across his face. She grabbed the front of his shirt and tried to undo the buttons with frantic fingers.

"Whoa now." Clark pulled Shayera off of Bruce and flew her to her quarters at superspeed.

Once they'd stopped, she blinked, looked at him and said, "Oh, hey, Superman. What are you doing here?"

He just shook his head and went back to Bruce, who was pressed against the wall like a hunted animal.

"I guess it's good that Diana's on the moon, right?" Clark said. "She doesn't have to know about this."

"What if it never goes away? What if Bat-Mite is so insane as to think that this is what I want?" Bruce was nearly hyperventilating. "I'll never be able to leave the house."

"There has to be a solution." Clark thought back to his perfect dinner plans and sighed. They'd just have to move Valentine's Day to the fifteenth. "Did you try anything?"

"Well first I tried going to Zatanna, but obviously that ended horribly," he said. "And then I went to the Batcave to see if it was chemical. It wasn't—and then Batgirl walked in and god I got out of there. She's _nineteen_, Clark."

Someone starting laughing. It sounded like a small child on crack. Bruce shot to his feet.

Bat-Mite jumped into existence hovering a few feet above the floor. He gripped his belly and laughed. Bruce grabbed his tiny neck and slammed him against the wall. "You are dead. _Dead._"

"Whoa now." Clark had to forcibly pull Bruce off of Bat-Mite. "We need his help, Bruce. We can't get that if you murder him."

"Fine." Bruce stepped back, hands clenched at his sides like he could barely control himself. "Now you had better tell me how to fix this and get your scrawny ass out of my dimension or I swear to god, Bat-Mite, I will find some way to mess you up."

Bat-Mite chortled again. Clark nearly put out a hand to keep Bruce back. Bat-Mite wiggled his fingers at them. "Oh, my little gift isn't permanent, Batsy. You'll just have to be _patient_ and not so angry. It's all for fun!"

He winked out just as Bruce leapt at him. His hands closed around empty air.

"Calm down," Clark said. "We'll find a way to fix this."

"And what am I supposed to do until then?" Bruce went back to looking utterly defeated.

"If it takes that long, you'll just have to go somewhere without many women." Clark tried to locate Dr. Fate. Apparently he was off-dimension. Great.

"So I either join the Taliban or go live in a gay bar." Bruce's shoulders slumped. "Wonderful."

"Oh, don't be melodramatic," Clark said, although he too was having trouble thinking of other non-women places. He checked his watch. Almost midnight. He was going to have one angry wife on his hands.

Suddenly they heard the beeping that alerted the Leaguers to a Javelin docking. Which meant only one thing: that Diana was back. Bruce went absolutely ashen. They looked at each other. Clark's watch hit midnight.

Heels clicked across the floor. Bruce turned in slow motion and swallowed hard.

"Hi guys." Diana walked up to them, yawning. Bruce stared at her. She raised an eyebrow.

He reached out and poked her arm. She gave him a look like he was out of his mind. He almost burst into laughter, but settled for sinking against the wall. "It's not Valentine's Day anymore! That's what he meant!"

Diana blinked and turned to Clark. "What's wrong with him?"

Bruce started chuckling. Diana's eyes went wide.

"It's a really long story." Clark shook his head. "And it involves Bat-Mite so things get crazy. And frankly, you might not want to know anyway."

Diana shrugged. "You want to get something to eat, Bruce? A belated Valentine's?"

"No." Bruce got to his feet, head shaking. "Absolutely, positively not. We can get something to eat—but it is _not_ a Valentine's dinner, understand?"

"Okay…" she said. "Whatever. It's not a Valentine's dinner."

"Thank you." Bruce put his arm around her, like he was just appreciative he could do it.

Clark slipped off to go have his own belated Valentine's.


	9. Drive

A/N: Another under-500 word experiment. I'm a bit over this time, but it was fun to do.

~Drive~

Clark hurtled towards the red Chevrolet at eighty miles per hour, hands over his eyes, preparing to crash through the steel and glass and the people inside without being able to do a thing to change it.

He was flung hard left.

"That was close, huh?" said Matches Malone (or more specifically, Bruce with a ridiculous fake mustache) from the driver's seat. Clark opened his eyes a smidgen and found that they'd somehow managed to get through a red light at one of the busiest intersections in Gotham unscathed.

"You're insane." Clark gripped the armrests. They were supposed to be gathering information on Intergang, not getting themselves killed. "We're in an 80's Valiant, Bruce, not the Batmobile."

"Lighten up." Bruce chewed on the end of a ten-cent match and casually did a U-turn on a one-way street. Sirens wailed behind them. "It's all part of the plan."

"_What_ plan?" Clark shouted as two cop cars tried to get them to pull to the side of the road. Bruce twisted the wheel and went over the sidewalk into an alley that was _not_ meant to be driven in.

"Keeping up our covers, of course. We're supposed to be thugs-for-hire, remember?" Bruce spit the wood pulp out the window and bit a fresh match between his teeth.

"Has all that phosphorous you're consuming gone to your head?" Clark flinched again as the barreled through two trashcans and onto a packed street, horns blaring left and right and the sirens right on their heels.

"Relax, I know how to drive. I'll lose them." Bruce was wearing a small grin.

"Argh!" Clark ducked as half of a fast food burger splattered across the windshield. He stared at Bruce. "You're an adrenaline junkie!"

"And you're invulnerable." Bruce brought them onto the boardwalk, dangerously close to the water, and jumped a gap between the end of it and the road five feet away. The cop cars stopped. "So I don't see what you're freaked out."

"I'd like to not kill anyone," Clark said, right before they screeched to a stop and he was slammed against the dashboard.

Bruce put it in park and climbed out. Clark, rubbing his head to make a point rather than out of actual pain, followed suit. A man in a dark black suit stood at the edge of the road. Bruce flicked the match onto the ground and sauntered up to him. "Are we in?"

"Your reputation is earned, Matches." The man slid out from the shadows and handed over two prepaid cell phones. "And your partner seems capable as well. Although perhaps a bit excitable."

"He hasn't been in the business as long as I have." Bruce took the cell phones and without another word the man vanished into the crackle of light from a black-market teleporter.

Bruce tossed one of the phones to Clark. The sun was breaking over the water. "We'll have to wait until tomorrow to take them out—can't jump on it to quick. You know, I think Alfred is making waffles this morning."

Clark stole the keys from Bruce's pocket at superspeed. "I do love Alfred's waffles—but dammit, Bruce, I'm driving home."

Bruce just rolled his eyes and followed him to the car.


	10. Bedroom

A/N: This chapter isn't explicit…but it does get steamier than usual. Forewarning.

~Bedroom~

Bruce was flat on his back on his bed in the Watchtower, with his clothes being stripped off of him almost viciously, and he had no idea how he'd gotten here. One minute he'd been returning from patrol for a few hours' sleep and the next a flash of something had knocked him off his feet and dragged him to the bed.

And now she had his shirt off.

"Diana," he said, after he'd managed to get some of the dryness out of his mouth. "Diana. What's going on?"

"I'm taking charge," she replied, and proceeded to take charge of his undershirt with her teeth. Any thought of resistance vanished from Bruce's mind. Her thin fingers played across tonight's fresh bruises and all the old scars. "Now stay still. You've got tiny zippers on this suit."

"There's a reason for that." He gasped when she started biting the skin by his neck. "Di—I have work to do."

"Sure." She pressed him down onto the bed. When she was determined there wasn't anything he could do to stop her. Especially when he didn't particularly want to. "Now toss off those boots."

He did as he was told. Her mouth moved below his neck. Vaguely he wondered where she'd learned this on an island full of girls.

"Now then," she whispered, deep and throaty. The tiara landed on his nightstand, and slowly (very, painfully slowly) she slipped off her costume. Bruce put his arms around her waist and was ready to do literally whatever the hell she wanted, when suddenly she stopped short. "Did you just get back from patrol?"

"Mm-hmm." His eyes barely opened.

Diana's nose wrinkled. "You need a bath."

"I what?" he groaned. "C'mon, Di…"

"A few minutes ago you were telling me how much work you had to do." She planted a kiss on his mouth. "And anyway, you did put rather large tubs in here. Certainly large enough for two."

He willingly followed her into the bathroom. She filled the tub with hot water and bubble bath (god knows where she found that). Her boots came off with two flicks of her feet. The water came up to their shoulders.

Diana cupped water in her hands and dumped it over his head. Any last thoughts of resistance disappeared. He kissed her neck, moving down.

And then his comlink buzzed.

"Ignore it," Diana murmured. He hit the button to send the call to voicemail and pulled her close to him.

It buzzed again.

"Dammit," he muttered, and answered. "Batman here."

"Hey Bruce!" Of course it was Clark. Who else would call twice with no apparent emergency?

"What do you want?" he snapped.

Diana twined her legs with his and tickled him. He jerked and choked back a chuckle. She laid her head on his chest and whispered, "You'd better hang that up soon. Or else I'll make this awkward."

"I need you to review Atom's plans for the new Javelin." Clark was chipper as usual. "And you need to sign off on the monitor duty schedule. You know, we should get coffee sometime. I haven't talked to you in awhile."

"I need you to _review_ something else," Diana whispered into his other ear, pressed tight up against him. Between her and the bath it was almost impossible to pay even the slightest attention to Clark. "And we haven't had some _special_ time in awhile."

She bit one of the jagged scars on his side. He jumped. "Ah!"

"What?" Clark said.

"I'm _busy_!" Bruce shouted. Diana clapped her hands over her mouth to stifle her laughter.

"The computer says you're in your room." It sounded like Clark was walking somewhere. Bruce was about to hang up the phone. "You can't be that busy if you're not in Gotham. You don't have just five minutes to take a look at this stuff?"

"Clark. I am busy. Leave me alone." Bruce's teeth grit together as Diana traced the knife wounds and bruises across his chest with her tongue. She had such small, fine teeth. He bit his lip so Clark wouldn't hear him groan.

"Oh, come on, I'm almost there."

Diana and Bruce froze and stared at each other. Bruce realized he hadn't locked the door.

"Hey!" Clark exclaimed, bursting through the door. He stopped short and his face went from pale to ripe tomato red. He dropped the file he was holding and slapped his hands over his eyes. "Oh! Oh…when you said busy…sorry!"

"_Get out!_" Bruce shouted. Clark turned and dashed out.

Diana settled back against the side of the tub. "Well that was mortifying."

The water was cooling. Bruce sighed and sank down so it was up to his neck. "Is the mood ruined?"

Diana gave him a small smile. "You want to get Chinese?"

Bruce was picturing the many ways he was going to murder Clark.


	11. Batmobile

~Batmobile~

"You sure this is safe?" Wally asked, as the Batmobile sped down a country road.

"I learned to drive in this car," Nightwing said. "We'll be fine."

Wally was too busy trying to wrap his head around the sheer awesomeness of learning to drive in the Batmobile to respond. Then he saw the huge panel of buttons in front of him and was seized by the urge to push every single one of them to figure out what they did.

He tried the orange one first.

Electricity crackled across the body of the car.

"Jesus!" Nightwing exclaimed, and slapped Wally's hand away from the panel. "One of those will call _him_ you know. I'd prefer to have some fun and not get killed for it."

"Right." Wally relaxed for a second, which was about as long as he could stand to stay relaxed. He started bouncing in the seat. The Gotham lights flashed past through the tinted windows. "What do you think we should do first? Go catch somebody? Take it out to the flats and see how fast it goes? Go through the McDonald's drive-thru and get burgers?"

He and Nightwing looked at each other and burst into laughter. Wally could just _see_ the poor fry cook pissing his pants when he saw the god-freakin' Batmobile coming through for an order of two burgers and Cokes.

"I say we try the speed." Nightwing's eyes were glinting behind the mask. Wally thought this might be what he looked like back when he was up on the trapeze—brilliant at it, adrenaline junkie, happy. He pushed the car past the speed limit. It accelerated smoothly with a lion's purr, just like the best cars do. Wally resisted the urge to stroke the leather dash.

The rocketed out across the freeway, zig-zagging between an old lady who could barely see over the wheel of her Buick and some young dick in a Ferrari who tried to race them. Boy, did he learn the folly of that. They broke off the road and across the flat plains. They couldn't even see Gotham anymore, not that they wanted too.

They broke 90, then 125, and finally the car hit 200 mph and wouldn't go any faster. Wally and Nightwing were shrieking with laughter.

Until they realized that they'd suddenly become airborne.

"Crap!" Nightwing exclaimed, trying to see who was beneath the car. "Crap! He found out we took it and he called Superman on us!"

The car was set down on the side of the road. Nightwing winced as he eased open the hood.

"Do you know how long I've been looking for you? What are you even _doing_ out here." Diana stopped and blinked. "Wally? Nightwing? Does Bruce know you've taken the car?"

Wally and Nightwing glanced at each other, mentally debating whether or not it was a good idea to lie to an Amazonian demigoddess of truth. Finally they just shook their heads.

She sighed at them. "You've left me in a difficult position, boys. On one hand I should probably call Bruce right now and tell him what you're up to. On the other hand, I was looking for him because this was the third date in a row he's broken. So I'm somewhat inclined to join you."

Wally and Nightwing blinked.

"You and Bruce have dates?" Nightwing asked, as if using "Bruce" and "date" in the same sentence was the equivalence of shaking up some matter and antimatter.

Diana rolled her eyes and hopped into the backseat. "Where to first, guys? Got any superpowered crooks for me to hit in lieu of a certain man-in-black?"

Flash and Nightwing shrugged, then Nightwing stepped on the gas and they shot off back towards Gotham City. "I'll see what I can do."

*****#*****

For the next hour or so they kicked, punched and tossed their way through an assortment of low-level drug dealers and petty thieves. Nightwing looked over to Diana once and saw that she was enjoying this just a _tad_ too much. Maybe Bruce was lucky he'd slipped away for the night.

"So," he said, in the midst of his fist connecting with an unfortunate gunrunner's jaw. That would take out a few teeth. "You and Bruce are kind of a item? That's cool. I think I like you a little better that Catwoman. She tied me upside down from a building once when I was Robin."

"We have a thing," Diana replied. "I don't know if that makes us an item."

"Oh, loopholes." Nightwing chuckled. "Careful—you're beginning to sound like him."

"God forbid." Diana tied up the last of the gang and gave him a last slap across the face for good measure. "Someone has to be able to retain a little bit of humor around that man."

Nightwing laughed. The crooks were looking at them all like they were absolutely absurd. Flash dropped a couple more unconscious hooligans next to the others. He gave Nightwing a raised eyebrow look. "Well goodness, if Bruce doesn't like her maybe you ought to have her."

Diana rolled her eyes and pretended not to hear them.

"What!" Nightwing stood straight up. "She's Bruce's girlfriend. She's like fifteen years older than me and I'm not Woody Allen in reverse."

Diana snorted. "I'm immortal, Dick, I hope that doesn't make me _too_ old."

"I didn't mean it that way." Dick scowled. He reminded Diana of Bruce when he did that.

Wally ambled up and slung his arm around Diana's shoulder. "If you ever want a guy with a sense of humor I'm not as uptight as Nightwing over here."

"What is going on here?" A dark shadow plunged down from the rooftop, growling. Wally and Nightwing nearly jumped out of their skin. Diana straightened up and very nearly smiled. Batman glared. "Well? I want an explanation. My car goes missing, I get reports of it blasting out across the suburbs…and you, Diana. What on earth are you doing as part of this?"

Diana looked over to Wally and Nightwing, who were practically cowering away from Batman. She fixed Bruce with an equally cold stare. "I borrowed your car. We were going on patrol and it is very nice."

Batman raised an eyebrow in obvious disbelief. "Oh? And how did you get in?"

"Alfred." Diana crossed her arms. "After all, you broke our date—_again_, I might add—he was sympathetic and offered a fast car. Much better to use up aggression on asphalt than an obstinate boyfriend, don't you agree?"

Bruce's jaw worked, but she was one person who could win an argument with him. "Would you like to get dinner now?"

"Chinese?" she offered and took his arm. Before they flew off she tossed one last glance to Wally and Nightwing. "Boys—take the car back for Bruce, would you? I'm sure he won't mind you driving it a wee bit more."

Batman, for his part, just shook his head.


	12. Goddess Part One

A/N: Well, I knew I was going to end up with at least one one-shot that became a two-shot. I feel obligated to have a sadness warning.

~Goddess~

The wind whipped around them, cutting through like knives. Batman paused to wipe the sleet and water off his face. Shattered glass from skyscraper windows littered the ground and his ears popped with another pressure drop.

"Do you see them?" Superman was barely twenty feet away from him but needed to use the comlinks to be heard over the howling.

Stormclouds cracked overhead. Somewhere up there was Weather Wizard. Bruce wasn't so worried about him. He was at best a third-rate supervilliam. No, Bruce was worried about his team, which included two sociopaths (Icicle and Killer Frost), Black Manta, and Parasite.

Diana touched his shoulder and dropped an unconscious Black Manta on the ground with a grin. She leaned close to him. "I bet you I'll get one of the ice villains before you do."

He pulled a grappling hook from his belt. "What do I get if I win?"

She smiled, coy. "You'll see." Then she leapt up into the stormcloud.

Clark looked at him and rolled his eyes. Bruce hooked a line on a building's flagpole. Diana and Weather Wizard were clashing in the eye of a convalescing hurricane. Once they got rid of him the others wouldn't have cover.

The storm got darker. Diana cracked a good left hook across Weather Wizard's jaw, and was nearly struck by lightning in return. Batman pulled out a batarang and tossed it up, smacking Wizard in the back of the head. Wonder Woman caught him as he fell.

"Nice shot," she said, and tied Weather Wizard to an electrical box on the roof of the building.

The storm started to dissipate. Clark, hovering thirty feet up, yelled something but Bruce couldn't make it out. Then the ground fog cleared.

Icicle and Killer Frost stood on top of a mountain of ice, policemen's bodies frozen inside, all grotesquely broken Parasite was crouched by the base of it, hunched like an animal while he sucked the life from a white-haired woman. Scattered around the villains likes flies were black-eyed Lexcorp drones.

Bruce froze. The air went dead still.

Superman swept down, knocking Parasite onto his back and tearing the woman from his grasp. Bruce swung down and narrowly missed being turned into a Batman-popsicle by Killer Frost. She giggled, a high maniac squeal that freakishly reminded him of Harley Quinn. He yanked out a batarang and started climbing up the ice.

Diana grabbed one of the robots by the skull. Lasers shot from its eyes and singed her hair. Bruce was going to have to pay Lex a little visit when this was done. The leech would have some story about how the bots were stolen, of course, but oh Bruce would give him something to think about.

Clark was still tangling with Parasite. His heat vision was flickering, He'd already had some of his energy stolen.

Icicle leapt down at Batman. Bruce parried a blow and knocked Icicle's feet out from under him. Killer Frost glanced down, still icing over innocent civilians, but he hand to take care of the other one first. Icicle scratched him across the face and it felt like his blood was freezing. He knocked Icicle away and the man skidded back along the ice shelf.

Diana had two robots smashed beneath her feet. Four left.

Clark got a good blow in on Parasite. The mutant fell back, stunned. Clark stood up, shaky, pausing for just a second in the replenishing sunlight.

And that was when it all went to hell.

Icicle slashed him across the legs and Bruce tumbled backward down the mountain. Killer Frost kept laughing. He cracked his head on one of the outcroppings and for a good half-minute everything spun.

Parasite leapt up. He'd only been playing opossum, and dove not for Clark but for Diana, wrapping his arms around her neck and she screamed as he drained her.

Killer Frost grinned—huge, wicked, insane—and fixed her hunger on the group of terrified civilians huddling in the sparse shelter of a laundromat's door.

Clark saw her intentions and went from them but Parasite dropped Diana emptied onto the ground, and grabbed him by the ankle. Clark fell.

Bruce leapt to his feet but he was fifty or sixty meters away and he didn't have superspeed.

Killer Frost focused on the small blond girl who'd gotten away from her mother, dragging up a sharp blade of ice fine enough to piece skin, tendons, bones.

Clark got free of Parasite and she hit him with a blast of ice that froze him quick. The little girl started screaming.

Killer Frost shot the blade with a burst of devilish glee. From the corner of his eye he saw Diana move, up somehow and then in a split second everything was red and he was running to her.

Blood everywhere. The little girl was curled against the wall, sobbing. Killer Frost howled with laughter. He touched Diana's shoulder and turned her over as gently as he could. The ice had torn through her like a cannonball. Red bubbles popped on her lips. He didn't want to look at her side, just brushed her hair away from her eyes.

She focused on him for a moment, and tried to say something, but she went limp and her head fell against his chest.

Something cracked behind him, the sound of Clark finally breaking free, and finally Killer Frost stopped laughing.

****#****

Clark and John were in the meeting room, boxing up the last of Diana's things to go back to Themyscira. They hadn't asked Bruce if he wanted to help. It hadn't seemed like a good idea.

Clark had expected him to go crazy, try and break Killer Frost's nose or something. But he hadn't even reacted when Clark tied her up and dumped her on the concrete. He'd stayed kneeling there in the rubble, cradling Diana's body.

When the medics had tried to take her away from him he hadn't let her go until Clark had taken him by the hand and pulled him away.

And now, five days later, they were barely seeing him. There hadn't been a funeral, of course, not in the Christian sense. They'd been allowed on Themyscira for the funeral pyre, when the Amazons let their princess's body out to sea in Viking fashion. Bruce hadn't spoken to anyone. Alfred had kept a hand on his shoulder through the entire ceremony.

"Have you seen him?" John asked. He and Shayera had been talking a lot lately.

"Only afterwards and at the funeral," Clark replied. If only he'd been a second faster. If only he hadn't fallen for Parasite's playacting. Diana would still be alive. "But according to Robin he hasn't even put on the costume since."

"I was kind of expecting him to storm in here and breaking something. Not…" John waved his hand and trailed off.

Someone knocked on the door. John opened it and in came Wally without any of his usual bounciness. He pointed towards the hallway. "Hey, um, Supes? Bats is here."

"He is?" Clark dropped the box he was carrying.

"Yeah. In Di's room."

Clark didn't wait to hear anything else.

Bruce was standing in the middle of Diana's emptied-out room. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt and it didn't look like he'd brushed his hair. Either he didn't hear Clark come in or he didn't care, but he didn't turn from the window.

"Looking for something?" Clark asked, cautiously.

Bruce turned around slowly and shrugged. "No. I don't know." He looked like he didn't entirely know how he'd gotten there.

Clark touched his shoulder. Bruce glanced at his hand and murmured, "Everyone keeps touching me."

"It's supposed to be comforting," Clark said, and decided to bit the bullet and ask. "Are you doing all right?"

Bruce only shrugged again. Clark waited. Finally he just shook his head a little. "I miss her." His eyes sparkled and he turned his face away like he didn't want Clark to see. Clark hugged him and for once Bruce let him, didn't even resist.

If Clark had been any worse a man, he would have murdered Killer Frost.

They just stood there together for a few minutes, looking out the window at the earth that was going on mostly untouched, until Bruce's comlink beeped. He took a breath, answered it, and hung up without a goodbye.

"Who was that?" Clark asked, thinking Alfred or one of the boys.

"Philippus."

"Hippolyta's second in command?" Clark frowned. "What did she want?"

Bruce's eyes wandered towards the part of the globe that shrouded the Amazons' island. "The Queen wants to see me."

**End Part One**


	13. Goddess Part Two

A/N: I think this might be my most anticipated chapter. Thanks for all the great reviews!

~Goddess Part Two~

Philippus came for him in one of the invisible jets. Her hair was almost shaved off and she held a spear in her hand like she was ready for war. When Bruce and Clark came down to the hanger bay she gave them both a look like she despised them.

Bruce reached out to Clark, unconsciously, like he wanted to grab his hand. "Clark? Want to come with me?"

"Just you," Philippus said, with a snarl.

Clark held his hand and Bruce didn't let him go. "I'm coming with him."

"_Just him_," Philippus repeated, and her hands curled tighter around the spear. Bruce looked at Clark with something like a plea and let go of his hand, following Philippus into the jet. Clark raised his hand in a wave before it took off.

****#****

They landed in Themyscira at twilight, outside the Queen's temple. Hippolyta stood on the shimmering white marble stairs in her linen gown and golden sandals. Except for her hair, she was every inch Diana. Bruce felt the knife in his stomach twist.

"Your highness," he said, swallowing the lump in his throat. The Queen's guard was giving him the same look that Philippus had. Hippolyta nodded and with a wave her hand dismissed the guard. They were alone on the steps.

"You were my daughter's…" he paused, like she didn't know what word fit. "Companion?"

Bruce shrugged. "Boyfriend."

Hippolyta gestured towards the smooth-pebbled path that ran along the ocean and into the jungle. "Please. Walk with me."

He followed her down the path. They meandered past the Amazon's training fields, their coliseum, the pools where baby kraken and three-headed sharks gestated. As they walked, Hippolyta told him stories. Of Diana reading Plato in her nursery and taming a lion cub. Of her beating Philippus at sword games and running with panthers through the jungles.

Bruce wondered if she was telling it for him or for herself, and decided it hardly mattered. They both needed it.

She showed him the small slate cabin where Diana had spent most of her teenage years, after deciding that she would rather live in the trees than the place. He smiled at the plain cream shifts lying on the table and the books of animals and philosophy on the shelves. He could imagine her here, maybe with a sword in one hand and the other on a cat (or more likely on this island a baby jaguar).

They walked further down the path into the cool embrace of the trees. Birds chipped over their heads, darkly and a little melancholy, like they too were mourning their princess. The path led to another Greco-Roman temple, smaller than the palace but well-cleaned with flowers arranged in the vases.

They stepped inside and once Bruce's eyes adjusted he almost lost his breath. Diana's armor hung in the center of the temple, in front of a statue of Athena. He didn't know if it was magic or Amazonian pride but he couldn't find a speck of blood. The armor was shining just as brilliantly as it had the first time he had laid eyes on her, during the aliens' attack.

"She stole it, you know." Hippolyta said, and her mouth thinned out so he couldn't tell if she was smiling at the memory or swallowing tears. "I didn't want her to go. But oh, Diana had such a heart. She wouldn't let Man's World go it's own way. She loved everything, my daughter."

Her eyes glistened a little in the moonlight. Bruce looked away so he wouldn't follow suit.

The queen took a deep breath, pulling herself together and went to the back of the temple. From a shelf she took a bundle bound in leather and cloth and held it out to him. "Here. She would want you to have it."

He unwrapped the bundle slowly. Inside were a book and a tiny glass vial on a chain.

"Her journal," Hippolyta explained. "And the bottle has sea water, kraken scale, and fleeceflower. We exchange them, with people who we love most."

He cupped the vial in his hand. The kraken scale shone like a rainbow. He didn't want to open the journal in front of Hippolyta—he knew it would break him.

"I don't suppose," he said, after a good breath of his own. "That because she was a goddess—magic—that there's any way to bring her back."

"The gods gave me my daughter." Hippolyta looked down, shook her head softly and he knew this was something that she had been wanting so badly it hurt. "And now they've taken her back. No one gets second chances."

By the time they walked back to the palace it was deep into the night. Hippolyta pointed him to a room in the palace before leaving for her royal chamber. He sat on the bed and stared out into the moonlight. He couldn't picture Diana here. He saw her in the heat of battle, glorious in her gold and silver, victory shining from every facet. He saw her on the odd nights when they were alone, soft and open but never vulnerable.

He saw her blood splashed across his shirt.

He pressed his eyes closed to stop the images, and lay back on the bed but couldn't sleep. The night felt restless and chill.

Even the wind in Themyscira was musical. Bruce got up from the bed and opened the curtains that led to the veranda. Stairs lead down to the blond sand beach. He followed them out to the water.

Maybe he was dreaming. The wind had gone from haunting to almost like a song. He felt light like his feet weren't quite touching the ground. Like this was all not real. The ocean shimmered and shifted. The waves were calling him to walk across the beach, towards the temple.

The path stretched out longer than he remembered it. The song had turned into a melody. Everything was soft and warm and he drifted across the crushed seashells (hadn't it been pebbles before?) like someone was calling him forward.

The trees fell away to a pool of dark green water. The temple above him wasn't the Athenian one—it was large and shone with golden light and he was sure that he could almost make out figures on the steps, though he couldn't focus on them. The ground beneath his feet was wet and soft like clay.

_Kneel_.

He didn't know whose voice he was following but he couldn't resist. The water smelled sweet like moss and roses. He plunged his hands into the earth, and they moved like they didn't belong to him anymore.

_Tell us_.

He didn't know what he was saying. He was pretty sure it was just babble, but all he could think about was Diana.

"I loved her," he said, into the night breeze where there was no one to hear him. "I did. I should have…I should've….there's so much I should've done."

The clay melted beneath his hands, smooth against his palms.

_Breathe_.

He did as he was told and he almost saw in the clay the smooth curve of lips, the pliant waves of hair. He didn't know what was happening, he just let any thoughts go.

****#****

Bruce woke up to a brilliant blue sky. He was lying on his back on sand that looked like mother of pearl and his hand was curled around someone else's. He felt calm and clear like he never hand before.

He turned over on the beach and saw Diana, her black hair fallen around her face, red lips halfway open as she breathed in and out in sleep. While he watched, not daring to move lest this vanish, she opened her eyes and smiled at him, reaching out for his face and brushing the sandy hair away from his eyes.

"I swear," she said, "I had the strangest dream."

He didn't trust himself to talk, just followed her when she sat up and looked around.

"Where are we?" Her brow knitted together. "This looks almost like—"

He couldn't resist any longer. He grabbed her by the shoulders, pressing kisses across her mouth and down her neck. She was wearing a white dress tied at the waist with a braided leather belt and he so badly wanted to tear it off of her to see her unscarred skin, her unbroken bones, her body unscathed.

"Bruce," she said, gently, with a little bit of blush in her cheeks, and he pulled back. "What's going on?"

"You died," he replied, surprised at the gruffness of his own voice. She jumped a little, touched the place on her side where the ice had torn through her like she didn't believe him. "But they gave you back to me."

"The gods?" she asked, softly, reverently. He nodded, and was going to say more, try to explain what had happened (though he doubted he could explain it or even remember it right anymore) when someone shouted.

They both turned and saw Philippus and the Amazonian guard running along the beach. The warriors stopped just short of running over them and Philippus leapt onto the ground, pulling Diana away from him. "Princess?"

Bruce didn't think he'd ever seen Philippus smile before.

"Yes," Diana said, rising to her feet. "It's me. I...the gods have chosen to give me a second chance. Now please, Philippus, I must see my mother."

"Of course," Philippus smiled as she bowed. Diana touched her shoulder like a good ruler, allowing her to rise, and then held out her hand to Bruce. He took it and followed her back towards the palace.

Halfway there, he stopped short and pulled the vial and journal from his pocket. "Wait. These are yours."

Diana took the journal from him, looked at the vial for a moment and then pressed it back into his hand. "My mother must have told you what this is for. Will you keep mine, Bruce Wayne?"

He knew the other Amazons were staring at them, and that he was stretching the limits of cultural politeness just by being a man on their island touching their princess. But frankly, he didn't give a damn at this point. He was simply near-deliriously happy.

The chain slipped over his head and Diana beamed. He pulled her close and pressed his mouth up to her ear, and her what he should have a long time ago.


	14. Alternates

A/N: Some of you might have followed my last story, Gateways, which has a lot of interdimensional travel in it (to say the least). That story had 12 alternate dimensions, but I fooled around with a lot more than those twelve. These are some of the ones I didn't use.

Also, I didn't realize that this would be so Superman & Batman-centric. But you know I love those two.

~Alternates~

They'd been picking their way across the ruined city for a day in and a half. Bruce had thought that they would have at least come across a 7-Eleven with some drinkable water or an overlooked pack of pretzels.

He missed pretzels, which was not something he thought he would miss after a zombie apocalypse. Or perhaps just not so acutely.

So far, all Chicago had offered them was a few opportunities to be nearly eaten alive. Clark had managed to rip a few of the zombies into un-reanimate-able shreds, and Diana had caught a baby one (the freakiest kind) howling alone in an abandoned apartment.

He'd put it out of its misery with tin can dagger, and afterward Diana had held his hand until they reached the Hancock Building.

In the beginning, it had been the three of them all together—the three last humans in the Northern Hemisphere. But then one night he and Diana had gone scavenging while Clark watched the fire and ended up staying away until the morning.

Clark hadn't said anything, but Bruce knew it was falling apart, just like the rest of the world.

*****#*****

When the Amazons went to war with Man's World, their princess nearly defected.

What had happened (and what was never, ever revealed to her sisters) was that a spy washed up on Themyscira. They didn't know he was a spy, of course, and even though they were at war the Amazons code of honor meant that they would help a wounded enemy.

He had very dark hair and was a very good liar, and made the princess think he loved her.

When she found out he was a spy, she cut his throat and tossed him still-gurgling to the kraken. Not even her mother knew that she'd cried afterward.

*****#*****

"Hey, Ma." Bruce tossed his jacket on the table. He'd come down to the farm from Kansas City for the weekend, because one of the cows was due to start birthing and he could use a break from criminal forensics for a few nights.

Ma was in the living room, knitting something. "Your brother is on TV."

Bruce stuck his head in and saw Clark sweep down from the sky to knock a green robot into the ground. He could still remember the night that the rocket had crashed into the duck pond out back. He'd inherited a brother at age three.

They looked quite a bit alike, actually. Clark was taller (only because he grew on sunlight, as Bruce constantly reminded him when they were kids) but they had the same dark hair. In high school they'd both been on the football team, until Clark's powers and grand sense of morality had kicked in and he'd left (though Bruce had tried his damndest to convince him to stay—they probably would have made it to States if he had).

The green robot got back up and Clark readied another punch. Bruce vaguely wondered who on earth decided to do things like build green robots to fight aliens. People with more money than brains, apparently.

The picture jumped to the reporter Clark had been dating for a few years. Personally, Bruce thought that the Wonder Woman chick was prettier and a little more Clark's speed, but Lois seemed nice enough and Clark had been hinting at engagement.

"Are Lana and the kids coming over for dinner?" Ma asked, while finishing her knitting.

"They're driving up after Amy's softball game." Bruce smiled at the thought of his youngest daughter, best pitcher on her team, and looked out the kitchen window at the rolling fields of wheat. Maybe Clark preferred Metropolis, but for him Kansas had always been where he'd belonged.

*****#*****

"Go ahead," the alien said, hovering above the ruined skyscrapers and broken bodies. His eyes glowed orange, and his smile was chilling. He was so, so sure he'd already won. "Take your best shot."

Bruce was standing on the edge of what might have been the Daily Planet building. Blood trickled from his head down his face and his ears were ringing. His cowl was ripped off and he was missing a glove. He didn't know where the others were but he was pretty sure that he was the last one alive.

His vision blurred in and out. The only thing keeping him standing was the thought of what Superman would do once he reached Gotham.

Superman was still talking. "Why don't you just black out already? So much easier to hit the ground unconscious than to make me finish you."

"Not on your life," Bruce growled. The ground was twenty stories down. Superman was hovering ten feet off the edge. He knew his balance wasn't even thirty percent of usual. And he had one chance.

He leapt for Superman, the last of the kryptonite grenades in his hand.

"Get off." The alien obviously hadn't been expecting this. Bruce held onto his cape and held up the grenade. The kryptonite chip flashed green.

Clark's eyes flashed, and Bruce realized that until now he'd avoided thinking of him as Clark at all. He'd deceived them all. Even Bruce had been lulled into thinking that maybe absolute power would not corrupt so absolutely. Until it had been too late.

He didn't mourn what friendship they'd had. No, it was very easy to hate Clark for the betrayl.

"No." Pain flashed across his back and his grip weakened. His fingers slipped on the pin.

"You pull it," Superman said, shooting up to the upper atmosphere where Bruce would asphyxiate if he didn't do it—do it _now_. "We both go down together."

"Fine with me," Bruce said, with his last breath, and pulled the pin.

*****#******

Maybe they were crazy. He thought that to himself every night they were together, just before falling asleep, because it made much more sense than that this was happening. Work-related stress release, maybe. Yes, that was it.

Bruce was dreading the day that Clark decided this was a relationship and started trying to get serious. Because then he would have to end it.

Clark turned over and half-opened his eyes. "What're you thinking about?"

"Nothing." He lay flat on his back and stared up at the ceiling.

"Yes you are." Clark propped himself up on his elbows and smiled. "You're adorably pensive right now."

"I was thinking about how sexy Diana was naked," Bruce replied, and gave him a look that clearly said to shut up about it.

Clark chuckled, because of all the people Bruce could've chosen to sleep with he just _had_ to pick the one who didn't take him seriously, and pulled him back under the covers.

*****#*****

"Give it up." Clark was staring the maniac down. The man _had_ to know he was done. Clark could smash his bones like toothpicks if he'd wanted. But Batman just grinned, crazy and huge as the moon, like he couldn't feel the smashed nose or the bone splinters in his arm grating together.

"You're not going to kill me." Batman's arm was locked around Wally's neck in a chokehold. He was strong enough to hold it like he didn't notice he had the World's Fastest Man gagging at his side.

Clark let his eyes flash danger-red. They should have taken him out before, when Black Canary's body washed up in Gotham Harbor with her throat slit. There hadn't been enough evidence, of course, but then the Question and Vixen and Impulse vanished.

Batman pressed his long, serrated knife against Flash's throat. His mask was torn off, not that he'd needed one anyway. His heels rocked at the edge of the cliffs behind Wayne Manor.

Bruce Wayne. Son of Martha and Thomas, both killed along with their butler when a second-rate superhero tossed a twenty-foot-tall villain through their hotel window. Clark tried to imagine what it would have been like to see his parents' bodies crushed and broken while a superhero cheered in victory. He still hoped he wouldn't turn to murdering all of the people with powers.

"Bruce," Clark said, which was probably his first mistake but he was so damn tired and Wally's eyes were so, so wide with pain.

Batman's mouth thinned and the knife bit into Wally's neck. He whimpered.

Diana flew up from the ocean, behind Batman and Wally and Clark perched on the hill. Batman saw her and knew he was outnumbered.

"Put the knife down." Clark held his hands up. "We can end this peacefully." He reached out for Batman.

Bruce nearly jumped backward. "Don't you touch me."

The edge of the cliff crumbled under his heel.

"You either have to kill me—" The knife pressed closer and Wally's blood welled up and Clark felt his own run cold, "—or I swear I will detonate the bomb in my belt and he dies too."

"No." And that's when Clark did it—without thinking and later he wouldn't even be able to say why—but he shoots just a burst of heat and it clips Batman in the side of the head and he falls just as Wally does.

And the bomb fell with them and was about to go off and Clark caught it and Diana caught Wally and Batman hit the rocks hard enough to break a skull.

And Clark ripped the bomb apart just as he landed but one look at the body of the only man he has ever killed and he knew it was too late.

Looking down at Batman, a man who had become almost as good as the people he hated, and all he could think was that this all could be so easily different.


	15. Proposal

A/N: Thanks to theamerican91 for this prompt! It was lots of fun to write.

Also, sorry for this taking an extra week to get done. Life got busy. On a related note, I'm looking for ideas for the next 5 one-shots, so if there's anything you want to read throw it at me!

~Proposal II~

"I ruined it," Clark said, lying on his bed in his good suit, staring up at the ceiling. "I utterly, utterly bungled it. I am a terrible boyfriend."

"You do realize that I'm just here to get your signature on the monitor duty schedule, right?" Bruce asked, having just walked into whatever the hell this was. "And I don't have a clue what you're going on about."

Clark turned over so he was looking at Bruce. "I was going to ask Lois to marry me. And I screwed it up."

Bruce sighed, and realized he wasn't going to get out of here without providing an impromptu therapy session. "What happened?"

"Well, I took her to the Chinese restaurant where we had our first date and some drunk college kid dropped drunken noodles in her lap." Clark sat up and his shoulders drooped. "Then there was a fire in the kitchen and we got rained on by the sprinklers. But I think my real mistake was suggesting we continue our date after that."

"You think?" Bruce said.

"So now I'm in the doghouse and I need to make my next try really good." Clark looked up at him. "Like, very very good."

"And you think I can help you?" Bruce tried to slip the monitor duty schedule into Clark's hands. Clark either didn't notice or ignored him. "I've never proposed to anyone before, and I don't plan on doing it anytime soon."

"You've had dozens of drop-dead gorgeous women," Clark said. "Surely you must be doing something right."

"I'm rich, and good-looking," Bruce replied. "If it's a choice between me and Trump I've got the advantage there. You and Lois have been dating for what, two years? I had her shirt off in three dates. And I didn't even have to reveal my secret identity to do it."

"For the sake of my sanity, we're going to pretend you didn't say that." Clark shook his head, and then added, "bastard."

Bruce shrugged. "I don't try to get dates. There's a certain kind of annoying socialite woman that tends to throw themselves into my lap. Both figuratively _and_ literally."

"Probably due to your overwhelming modesty." Clark smiled a little. "Seriously, though, don't you have any ideas?"

"Well, you could use a nicer suit, but I've been telling you that for months." Bruce checked him over. "And a Chinese restaurant, really? I don't care if it is sentimental; you have to take a girl somewhere nicer for a proposal dinner."

"Like an Italian place?" Clark asked.

Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose and wondered how on earth Lois had put up with this overgrown farm boy for so long. "No, Clark, type of cuisine is not the issue here. _Atmosphere_ is."

Clark stared at him blankly.

Bruce threw the papers at him again. "Sign these. Then come to the monitor bay with me. We'll get you a good date."

****#*****

Diana glanced at them over her shoulder as they walked into the monitor bay, her feet up on the keyboard and an iced mocha in her hand. "What are you guys doing here? It's the middle of my shift."

"We're picking Clark a date restaurant." Bruce sat down in one of the leather chairs and started shifting through restaurant websites that Clark knew he couldn't get into without a year-in-advance reservation.

"Oh." Diana leaned over. "Those places seem a bit much."

"I've got this," Bruce said.

"Really?" Diana set him with a look. "Because you're trying to impress Lois, who last I checked was female, and I'm the only girl in this room."

"I dunno, I think it should be _pretty_ fancy." Clark was nearly ignoring her. Diana rolled her eyes and decided to let the boys screw it up if they so desired.

"How about this place?" Bruce pointed at the menu for an Asian-fusion place with very white tablecloths and drinks whose names were more than three words long. The food was stacked in ways that seemed to defy gravity. "The maître de has me a table for next Sunday, which you're free to take."

Clark's eyes widened. "Jesus! That's the price for an _appetizer_?"

"Eh," Bruce said, like that was slightly higher than a McMuffin, rather than slightly higher than a few bars of gold. "You're due a bonus for services rendered to the Watchtower. Just send the bill to Expenses."

"That place seems maybe a bit pretentious, don't you think?" Diana asked. But of course they both ignored her.

Clark peered at the pictures of the dining room. "I need a new suit."

"Yes, yes you do." Brue spun around in the chair and looked him up and down. "How do you feel about slate?"

*****#******

"Wow," Lois said, as they stepped through the door. She'd had a strange night already, what with her boyfriend showing up in a pressed, tight suit (a bit uncomfortably like Luthor, she thought) and displaying in the cab (a cab!) a sudden knowledge of fine wines. "This place is…something,."

"Something special for a special lady," Clark told her and almost immediately heard Bruce's voice in his head snapping _Don't sound like an idiot!_ Luckily, he remembered to pull out her chair for her.

"Are you sure you don't want to go some place somewhere a little less dressy?" she asked, after her eyes nearly popped from their sockets at the menu prices. Suddenly her thrice-worn blue dress felt much too shabby.

"Why?" he asked, though he was practically itching to get out of here. "Don't you like it?"

"Sure, honey." She smiled, but she was wondering if after the disaster of their last date this was some sort of hint. Was he saying she needed to step things up a bit? Because if he was, he had another thing coming.

The food came. Everything was very small and very rare and Clark had to work very had to remind himself that it wasn't his money. Meanwhile, Lois was looking blankly at the array of tiny forks in front of her.

"I think you use the leftmost one," Clark said, and picked up his own fork.

"Well thanks for the instructions." Did Lois sound snappish?

Clark tried to backtrack. "I've just been watching a lot of society parties recently…for the paper and all…you know, hobnobbing with the well-mannered." Was it the restaurant's atmosphere that was making him tongue-tied?

Lois smacked her wineglass down on the table. "Clark, are you trying to tell me something?"

"I…" he started, trying to find where he'd gone off the rails.

"Because so far tonight you've barely spoken to me, taken us to this ridiculous restaurant that you can see I'm underdressed for, and criticized my manners. Got some _well-mannered_ society girl you want to get with?" Lois stood up, nearly knocking her chair over. "You don't have to create some elaborate scenario to break up with me."

And with that she stormed out, leaving Clark sitting stunned at the table.

*****#*****

"This is your fault!" Clark was pacing back and forth, wearing holes in the carpet and ranting. "I should have listened to Diana."

"Not my problem." Bruce was sitting at his computer, completely unconcerned as usual. "I just told you what works for me. It's not on me if you can't pull it off."

Clark suddenly understood Bruce's urge to punch a wall every time he got frustrated but just pinched the bridge of his nose instead. And then, thank god, Diana poked her head in the door to the monitor bay.

"I heard yelling," she said, which was code for _I'm going to stop by and make sure you two don't kill each other_.

"I need your help," Clark said.

Diana raised an eyebrow but dropped into a chair. "To fix something that Bruce screwed up? Because I distinctly remember warning you to listen to me and not him."

"I know, I know, I know." Clark gave her his best puppy dog look. "I don't know what happened. We were eating dinner and it started out bad and then I said some stupid stuff. And Lois walked out on me."

"Tell me what happened," she said, after shooting Bruce a look that he rolled his eyes at and dismissed. And when Clark had finished she wanted to bang her head against the desk. "Clark. Never say something remotely negative about a woman's manners."

"I know," Clark said for the fourth time. "What am I going to do? Lois thought I wanted to break up with her and I wanted to ask her to _marry_ me. Jesus. How did I screw this up?"

"Here's what you're going to do." Diana jumped up from her chair. "You're going to get flowers, take her to somewhere nice but not Bruce-level crazy-"

Bruce was the one giving _her_ looks now, and she just ignored him. "—and tell her exactly what happened. And then you propose to her. Got it?"

Clark blinked.

Diana shoved him towards the door. "Go! What are you waiting for, her to cool down?"

*****#******

When Lois opened the door, she didn't look at all happy to see him. But at least the door was open. And she softened a little when she saw the roses. Still, he jumped right in before she got a chance to say anything. "Lois, listen, I wasn't trying to break up with you. I swear. I was trying to do something romantic and I took Bruce's advice on it. And it kind of failed. Obviously. I'm sorry."

Lois was kind of staring at him, but hey, she hadn't kicked him out.

So he got down on his knee and held out the ring in his pocket. _Marry me_ sounded worse in this situation and he couldn't formulate anything other than, "This was what I'd wanted to do."

"Oh, Clark. Of course!" She broke into a smile and Clark felt relief flood through him. Lois leaned down and kissed him, but then paused and gave him a look. "Did I just agree to marry a guy who took Bruce's advice for starting a commitment?"

Clark shrugged. "Bruce seems to be successful. Unfortunately it only works for him."

"Bruce puts expiration dates on his girlfriends," Lois replied, "and varies it based on how good they are in bed. And again I ask, you thought this would be a good idea?"

Clark raised his right hand. "I solemnly swear to never listen to Bruce in romantic matters ever again."

"Thank you," Lois said, and slipped the ring onto her finger.


	16. Break II

A/N: I've gotten several requests for a sequel to Break, and so here it is! (Starring Wally, as well, who I adore writing).

~Break II~

Bruce still had three weeks left, and it was killing him. Mindless video games only went so far. He'd read through the entire library, and had even started darning socks for Alfred. He so badly wanted to go for a run or just to stretch. Currently he was pacing around the sunroom as well as he could on crutches watching the first snowfall of the year.

Someone was ringing the bell. Manically.

Alfred appeared in the doorway, drying his hands on his apron. "Sir. Mister Wally is at the door. Should I show him in?"

"No," Bruce said, just as Wally burst through the door and shouted, "Bats! Shouldn't you be sitting down?"

Alfred gracefully removed himself from the situation. Bruce glared at Flash. "No."

"Aw, come on Bats, I bet you'd be less grouchy if you sat down." Wally jumped himself into superspeed and tossed Bruce into a chair, stepping on his foot in the process.

Bruce jumped. "Ow!"

"See?" Wally said.

"No, you stepped on my foot and you're wearing boots, you idiot." Bruce tried to grab his crutches but Wally knocked them away from his reach. Bruce snarled at him.

"You really should learn how to take a break." Wally shook his head like Bruce was a preschooler. "Man. You'd think you'd be happy to just read a book and eat a ton of Alfred's cookies. Say, you don't think that Alfred is baking today, is he? Cause I could really use a cookie."

"Wally." Bruce desperately needed an aspirin—not for his leg but for the headache that was slowing but surely building between his temples. "Please. I beg of you. Leave me alone."

"Supes said you were bored." Wally bounced on the sofa. "So I decided to visit. Want to play Scrabble?"

"I don't own Scrabble."

Wally sighed and collapsed quite dramatically on the couch. "Who doesn't own Scrabble? Do you just hate fun, Bats? Do you?"

Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose and realized he was beginning to hate _life_. "All right, Wally. Maybe there is something you can do for me."

Wally jumped up like a puppy, and Bruce did not feel a wink of guilt over it.

"I was going to go through all the information I have on a gangster named John Snipe. I don't really remember what case he was involved in, but if you can go find the records…" Bruce trailed off and pretended to lean against the arm of the couch like he was tired.

"Cool!" Wally grinned. "And you should take a nap. I heard that's good."

"Sure, sure," Bruce said, thinking that maybe he'd need to if Wally was planning on sticking around, and resisted the urge to push the kid out the door and bolt it behind him. "Go on now, it's _really important _that you find that information."

Wally zipped out and Bruce tried to concentrate on a murder cold case. But the peace and quiet was nice and alluring after Wally's exit, and he found that perhaps a very short nap would be nice.

*****#*****

"Bats! Bats! Batsbatsbats!"

Someone was shaking him and shouting. Bruce's emergency reflex went off. He leapt up. "What? What is it?"

"I thought you were dead." Wally was standing in front of him holding a stack of file folders and looking worried.

Bruce stared at him, and realized he'd only gotten half an hour of reprieve. "Please. Do explain."

"People can die from broken legs!" Wally exclaimed in his best _I'm-not-stupid_ voice.

"Not when they've been patched up."

"Well I found your files." Wally dropped the stack of papers onto Bruce's lap. Bruce stared at them. How had the kid been dumb enough to miss a freakin' _snipe hunt_ and then actually turned something up? "But your problem was that it wasn't Snipe, it was Snope. But I found him!"

Bruce looked down at the files. "Thank you, Wally."

Wally's chest puffed up. "Anything else I can do?"

Brue racked his brain. Anything. "I bet Alfred would love it if you helped him. And maybe you'd even get some cookies—" Wally had disappeared before he'd even finished the word. So he finally got to close his eyes again….

"Master Bruce!"

….and open them again six minutes later. Alfred was dusted head-to-toe in flour, all except for his face, which was turning an alarming shade of scarlet. Bruce blinked and sincerely hoped that this was a dream. "Master Bruce. Why oh why would you tell Mister Wallace to help me?"

Bruce started to say something but Alfred wasn't done.

"Firstly," he said, "I don't think the boy has cooked anything but ramen in the entirety of his life. And secondly, sir, in what possible scenario did you _not_ foresee something like this happening?"

"I actually just wanted him to leave me alone," Bruce said, after a good full half-minute of silence.

Alfred stared at him and then stalked out of the room without another word, only to return a minute later with a dusty box. Bruce couldn't figure out what it was until Alfred smacked it down on the table and he saw it was a long forgotten game of Battleship.

Alfred pointed a finger at him. "Play with him and don't either of you bother me while I'm cooking."

Wally bounced in a few minutes later. "Wanna play Battleship?"

"Guess so." Because honestly what choice did he have? The answer: none when it involved disobeying Alfred. So they sat down and started playing, and while Bruce tried to turn off the part of his brain that calculated statistical probability (he didn't want to cream the kid) he started enjoying himself.

And then the doorbell rang, and Clark tramped in.

"Aw," he said. "This is nice."

Which meant that Bruce gave him a deathstare, and Clark just ignored it. "Can I play?"

"I guess you can _try_," Bruce said. "Despite it being a two-player game and all."

"Okay!" Clark said and plopped down next to them. "Wanna be a team, Wally?"

"You know what we should do?" Wally asked, approximately four seconds later because apparently he had the attention span of an over-caffeinated fruit fly, and/or just loved to torture Bruce. "We should get Di and Shay and John and J'onn over here and have a zombie movie party! What better way to take advantage of a crazy old mansion with a giant TV?"

"Absolutely not—" Bruce began, but Clark cut him off. "Sounds like fun."

"Fun!" Bruce shouted, after Wally had leapt up in a fit of glee. "It'll be _fun_ to have a zombie movie marathon in my house when I've been trying to shove that kid out the door for the past three hours?"

Clark held his gaze. "I'm hoping he'll rub off on you."

Wally bounced back in carrying a cardboard box. He dumped it on the couch, DVD's spilling out across the cushions and Bruce's lap. "I stopped by my apartment and got these. And guess what—everyone said they could come! I love superspeed."

Bruce glared at Clark. Clark just smiled and sank Bruce's battleship.

*****#*****

So that was how Bruce found himself and eight other people (Dick and Tim decided to join them) crammed into the den, watching eighties monster movies with bowls of popcorn that Alfred had magically appeared with. Bruce was sitting on the couch, leg propped up on the ottoman, with Diana on one side of him and Tim on the other. He couldn't help but notice that the blood looked like ketchup.

"I take it this wasn't your idea?" Diana asked, while Wally blathered on about how real the brains in this one looked. "Because you're not very fun or spontaneous in the best of times, let alone when injured."

On the TV, some redneck farmer shot fat old guy zombie. Tim, who'd consumed an entire bag of popcorn by himself at this point, snuggled up against Bruce's side with his eyes half closed. Diana smiled at the boy and put her arm around Bruce. Wally and Dick were fighting over another bowl of popcorn, and John and Shayera were about as close as they could get without being accused of cuddling.

Clark caught his eye while a vampire and a werewolf (and yes, three zombies) tangles onscreen, and mouthed _Still hate this?_

Bruce flicked at piece of popcorn at his face. Clark ducked it and just laughed. Diana gave Bruce a look and he settled back, half-begrudgingly resigning himself to watching the damn movies.


	17. Lost

A/N: This one has been bouncing around in my head for a long time, and now that it's finally written I'm really liking it. Hope you do too.

~Lost~

Clark flew home at Mach 8 when he got the emergency call. It was automated, one of the comlink auto-activate beacons that were only supposed to be used in deadly times. And this one was coming from inside his apartment.

Thunder shook the skyscrapers and lightning cracked across the sky, but he didn't stop to find if anyone was in trouble.

He didn't know what he was expecting when he burst through the balcony door. Lois, in the clutches of a villain who'd finally been smart enough to figure it out. Kara, wounded in a fight. Jimmy, in one of the impossible predicaments the kid somehow always managed to find.

He had never, ever expected it to be Bruce, curled on the kitchen in a ripped costume with blood and mud and grime streaked across his face. His mask was off, and his gloves were missing. He looked wild.

When Clark stopped short in the living room, Bruce glanced up at him but didn't say anything. He was breathing like he'd either just been fighting or like he was holding back tears. And perhaps the scariest thing was that Clark didn't know which it was. So he just sat down next to Bruce. "What happened? Are you all right?"

Bruce turned to him with blank eyes. There were water tracks through the dirt on his face. Rain? Tears? "It's over. It's done."

"What is?" Clark scanned him as subtly as she could. His heart rate was off the charts. And even though he'd obviously been sitting here for awhile his breathing wasn't getting any slower. His body temperature was elevated slightly, but he wasn't feverish.

"Remember the Kryptonite?" Bruce grabbed his wrist, as desperately as a drowning man.

"Can you be more specific?" Clark looked at his eyes. His pupils were too large.

"The kryptonite. That you gave me." Bruce jumped away when Clark tried to touch him. "To kill you. If you ever went off the reservation."

Clark pulled back just a little bit, because suddenly he didn't know where this was going and Bruce had brought kryptonite into the mix. And Bruce had done crazier things than stab a person with a toxic mineral when he was under the influence of something.

Bruce nearly leapt across the distance and grabbed him by the front of his shirt. They were so close together that it was the first time Clark noticed the tiny cuts, like paper cuts, slashed across his cheek. What on earth had he been doing? Rolling around in a gravel yard in the rain?

"I don't need to give you kryptonite. You don't need a kryptonite for me." Bruce's words were tripping over themselves, running together like an avalanche so Clark could barely understand what he was saying. "You could just use heat vision. Like the Justice Lord did. On Doomsday. Or superstrength. Or you could freeze me. Slow enough for the ice crystals to destroy the cellular structure."

Clark stared at him. "Are…are you asking me to kill you?"

Bruce nodded, still clutching Clark's collar with hands that shook like he was on crack.

"I am _not_ going to do that." Clark pried Bruce's hands away as gently as he could, even though he wasn't that sure Bruce could be trusted not to hurt _himself_. "Tell me what happened, okay?"

Bruce wrapped his arms around his knees and wouldn't meet Clark's eyes. For a minute he just shook his head again, and then he said so softly that Clark almost couldn't hear it, "I broke it. I broke my rule. They...they…they killed him and then I snapped and I broke it."

The words stopped short and for a moment his mouth worked without anything coming out. Then he made a sound like he was in pain and jumped to his feet, pacing back and forth across the kitchen, almost shaking, muddy bootprints all across the tile. Clark stood up slowly, not a hint of superspeed, and Bruce hung against the opposite counter, almost as far away as he could get in an apartment kitchen.

Clark held his hands up, because he didn't know what else to do, and repeated, "Tell me what happened."

"There was Joker and Scarecrow and a bunch of their goons." Bruce's eyes got faraway but his speech didn't slow down anyway. Clark ran his vitals again, and almost impossibly his pulse wasn't leveling out either. Bruce had a standing heart rate of something like 35 beats per minute, and now he was well over a hundred. "And it was me and Tim alone. Up in one of the clock towers. Sixty, seventy feet up. Too high. A fall would kill."

He was leaning against the sink like he wasn't strong enough to hold himself standing.

"And I thought Tim was doing okay but there were lots of them." His voice caught. "And then the Joker was on top of him with a knife and I couldn't get there fast enough. They were all on top of me. It felt like drowning. And then there was a lot of blood."

He shuddered. Clark stepped a little closer but Bruce shrank closer to the granite countertop. Clark hadn't had time to turn on a light, and all he could see of Bruce face now was the shadows outlining his mouth and nose and eyes.

"And then the Joker had Tim by the collar." Bruce took a breath that was almost a gasp and Clark thought he would break. But somehow he didn't. "And we were so high. And Joker—and Joker put him through the glass."

He choked, and Clark crossed the kitchen in two steps. Bruce let him pull him close. For a full minute he just stayed still, head against Clark's shoulder.

"One of them had a gun." Bruce's voice was still and stoic now, all the emotion drained onto the ground. He went stiff in Clark's arms. "Joker was laughing. I don't know what I was doing. It was on the ground and then it was in my hand. He was laughing and he'd just thrown Tim out the window and I just wanted him to stop laughing."

"Bruce," Clark said, holding him by the shoulders. "Bruce, I—"

"He killed Tim and then I killed him." Bruce buried his face in his hands. "And so you have to end this. Because I broke my rule and I didn't protect Tim and it has to be _over_, do you understand? It has to be over. You have to end it."

Clark looked at him. He was distraught nearly to the point of tears. He looked like he'd been fighting. But there wasn't nearly enough blood on him for what he'd described and when Clark looked deep enough into it, it was all his own. And for Bruce to have been fighting enough men to keep _him_ down, he'd have more bruises than this.

"Bruce," he said, soothing, still holding on to him. "Where did Scarecrow go in all this?"

Bruce finally looked up at him, grief replaced by momentary confusion. "I don't…I don't know. I think he…" But he couldn't come up with an answer.

Clark rubbed his back, trying to keep him from bolting away again. "I don't think you're thinking straight. I think you're dosed with fear toxin, and maybe a little Joker venom, too."

Bruce stood still for a minute, and then shook his head frantically and yanked away from Clark. Or tried to, because he was caught between Clark and the sink. His face when from upset to hunted.

"No." His voice rose from soft to yelling in the space of a syllable.

"Bruce!" Clark tried to grab his arm, but somehow Bruce scared beat superspeed any day, and then he was up on the counter trying to unlatch the thirteenth-story window with palsied hands. Ice cold ran through Clark and he reached out to catch Bruce's sleeve. But Bruce saw what he was doing and put his fist through the glass.

And then there was enough blood, everywhere. And Clark finally pulled him down, not worrying about hurting him anymore, because they'd hit the point where it was beyond that.

"Let go of me," Bruce said, the picture of frozen rage.

Clark had his arms wrapped around him, so Bruce couldn't get up even if he'd been trying. "No. Not until you calm down and listen to me. Tim isn't dead, okay? I'm sure if we called him right now he'd pick up. He's okay—you're the one that's not."

Bruce shook his head again, but at least he wasn't actively fighting anymore. He was shivering, and Clark hoped to god it was the drugs wearing off. Very, very carefully he let go of Bruce with one hand and reached down to see how badly the guy had sliced himself up.

"Ow," Bruce mumbled, vague, when Clark picked up his hand. But at least he didn't resist. There were cuts and glass shards all through his palm and across his knuckles, and he'd managed to break the skin across two fingers as well. Bruce flinched when he pulled out one of the bigger shards, jagged and bloodied, but didn't say anything. Clark did everything almost painfully slowly. Bruce just leaned against the cupboards and watched like this was all happening to someone else, though he didn't let Clark move his other arm from around him.

*****#******

Bruce woke up, mouth tasting like iron and salt, with a headache that was nearly as bad as a hangover. Above him a ceiling fan spun lazy circles. He had never owned a ceiling fan in his life.

"You awake?"

He looked over and realized with a start that he was almost curled against Clark, on Clark's couch, with no memory of how he'd gotten there.

Clark was looking at him like he was a danger. "How're you feeling?"

Bruce ran his tongue across his teeth and tried to put blurry pieces together, but he was coming up with nothing. "Fear toxin."

"Yeah. You owe me a window." Clark stood up and pointed to the glass over his kitchen sink, which had been patched with saran wrap and duct tape. Bruce looked down at his hand and found it bandaged from the wrist all around his hand and down two fingers. He still didn't remember any of it. From the way he hurt, though, he must have done a lot more than punch one window.

Clark let him stay lying on the couch. "You want breakfast? Ma taught me how to make mean scrambled eggs."

"I have work to do," Bruce replied, even though he wasn't making any move to leave.

Clark played along, enough to ask "Really? Even after getting doused with fear toxin, begging me to kill you, and putting your hand through glass—let alone everything that doubtlessly happened to you _before_ you got to my apartment—you're not going to let me take care of you just enough to feed you before you go out trying to get yourself hurt again?"

Bruce looked at him silently. Clark by this point knew enough to distinguish stubborn silences from surrendering ones, and pulled a blanket over him.

And Bruce didn't belabor the point. Because maybe it would be nice to spend an hour dozing on Clark's couch to the smell of cooking bacon, where the worst problem was overcooking the eggs.


	18. Advice

A/N: Still technically posted on Saturday! Also, the end is nigh, and if anyone has something they would like to see in the 20th one-shot, please let me know. I want to do something cool, because it will most likely be the last one-shot for awhile.

~Advice~

"Bats."

The whisper came from somewhere around the monitor bay. Bruce looked up, didn't see anyone, and decided the lack of sleep was finally getting to him. Somewhere between the end of his shift and the start of patrol he'd have to fit in a nap.

"Bats!" The fake plant in the corner of the room rustled. Bruce rolled his eyes and wonder why on earth this always happened to him. Then, begrudgingly, he got up and went over to the plant.

"Wally," he said, with utter measured calmness that didn't betray a _hint_ of any homicidal urges. "Why, may I ask, are you crouched behind the ficus?"

"I need your help, Bats." Wally rolled out from behind the plant and looked up at Bruce from the floor in a mock-dead sprawl. "Kara and I have been dating for a year. And so I totally have to get her something, but I've never, like, dated a girl for this long before. So you gotta help me."

"You want me to help you pick out a gift for your girlfriend," Bruce repeated, just to make sure he wasn't hallucinating this. "Why on earth would you decide that I'm the person to go to?"

"I forgot," Wally said, sitting up with a scowl. "You've got an Alfred for that."

"I am perfectly capable of getting things for girls without any help." Bruce's annoyance level was rising. Alfred didn't do _everything_ for him, thank you very much. "What I'm _saying_ is that Clark is the married once, and therefore the logical person to ask."

"But I don't want to _marry_ Kara." Wally saw Bruce's raised-eyebrow look and jumped to add, "At least not yet."

"Just get her chocolate. Its not like Kryptonians worry about gaining weight."

"I can't do that!" Wally jumped up and grabbed Bruce's arm before Bruce could stop him. "It has to be something good. Come on, night doesn't start in Gotham for another three hours. You've plenty of time to help me out a little."

"Wally…" Bruce sighed.

"I promise I will leave you alone for…for a week at least." Wally clapped his hands together in prayer formation. "And I'll take your monitor duty shifts for the next month! Please?"

Bruce sighed. Wally's eyes got wide enough for him to double as a Pixar character. Bruce wished that he had enough caffeine in his system to have the energy to spar with Wally. "All right. One hour, got it?"

"Yes!" Wally leapt up and nearly hugged him but Bruce gave him a death-stare and luckily Wally decided not to be an idiot for once in his life.

"So what were you thinking? Jewelry? A puppy?" Bruce hit the transporter button and they materialized in the Gotham City shopping district, in street clothes. He immediately felt the uncomfortableness of being incognito among a bunch of normal people without it being for a mission.

"She already has Krypto." Wally's brow furrowed. "And I think that he's already kind of a handful. I mean a _regular_ puppy wouldn't eat as much dog food as he does but if you've gotta play fetch with redwood trees—"

"I was kidding about the dog." Bruce cut him off. "Getting your girlfriend a live animal is never a good idea. Either they're stuck with a pet for years or you get a fish and it goes belly-up by the next morning."

"Jesus. Did you get dumped by the first girl you bought a kitty or something?"

"It's common sense." Bruce suddenly recalled why he tried to minimize his time with people in general, and especially ones like Wally. "You brought me along because you lack it, remember?"

Wally, for an instant, looked just a bit hurt. Bruce sighed. "How about jewelry?"

"You can't just get a girl jewelry all the time. Either she thinks you're cheating on her or you look like a rich dick." Wally's eyes slid over to Bruce. "No offense."

Bruce supposed he deserved that one. "Does she have a hobby?"

"She collects old books in weird languages." Wally brightened a little. "Hey! You like stuff like that too. Can you take us to a bookshop?"

"Great idea." Finally. They were getting somewhere. Maybe he would be able to be home by dinner and _not_ have Alfred scoff at him about how he should 'spend more time with his friends.' He estimated the rest of this excursion to take under an hour. "There's a curio shop down this alley that has a great selection of first editions. I'm sure you could get her a couple of novels in Burmese or Urdu."

"Cool-cool-cool!" Wally bounded into the shop, Bruce following behind more slowly. Wally was already at the shelves of old, beautifully leather-bound books at the back of the dusty shop. Brue ran his finger along the spine of a first-edition Shaw, the title scrolling across in gold script. They just didn't make books like they used to.

"No!" Wally had somehow managed to tear all of the books off the shelves and pile the (pricey) first additions and rare translations on the floor. "These are all in Spanish! And German! Those are _boring_ languages. She's got those. We need a book in like some abandoned Amazon language. Or something."

Bruce turned to the elderly shopkeeper, who was holding his letter opener like he wanted to kill them both with it. "We're looking for a book in a rare language. Maybe something Asian or African?"

"You're a week too late." The shopkeeper licked his finger and turned back two pages in his immense ledger. "The linguistics department of the university got a grant. Bought out almost my entire stock. Left the Chinese and the Spanish and the German. But they took all the strange stuff."

Wally hung his head like a man awaiting his own execution. Bruce thanked the shopkeeper and they left the store. As soon as they hit the pavement, Wally slumped against the wall. "My date is in forty-five minutes, and I'm going to end up getting Kara a stupid birthstone ring. Do they even _have_ birthstones on Krypton?"

"That's not a question I have ever had the need to ask Clark." Bruce scanned the street. He certainly didn't trust Wally's observational skills enough to have him pick out clothing for Kara. And the kid blushed when they passed a lingerie store—not that Bruce wanted to be on the receiving end of _that_ phone call from Ma Kent. "What do you guys do together?"

"Um," Wally said, and turned a vivid shade of pink while pulling at his shirt like the temperature had suddenly jumped ten degrees.

"Ah," Bruce replied. "Well, don't let Clark hear about that."

"Bats!" Wally stared at him, mouth practically hitting the ground. "I don't mean _that_! Jesus. We just make out a lot, okay! Not…uh…."

"I got it, I got it." Bruce was very, very glad he'd been too busy training to date before the age of twenty-four. It seemed like a hell of a lot of work for very little reward. "You can stop blushing so much. Honestly."

Wally looked sheepish and peered into the windows they were passing. Nothing interesting.

"Here. Let's settle this." Bruce pulled out his cellphone, and rang Clark, despite Wally's attempts to stop him.

"H'lo?" Clark sounded like he'd just woken up, and Bruce remembered that he was actually in Beijing, on assignment from the _Daily Planet_. Oh well. He jumped right into it and trusted that even a sleep-deprived Kryptonian was sharp enough to keep up. "What does your cousin want from Wally for their anniversary? I'm trying to help him pick out a present."

"I don't really think I want the guy who's slept with every girl in Gotham to pick out a present for my nineteen-year-old cousin," Clark said. "No offense."

"What kind of person do you think I am, Kent?" Bruce glared at the phone. Wally backed away. "_I'm_ not the one dating her. And Wally here certainly isn't going to be buying any dirty gifts. We'd be done by now if he was willing do that."

Clark paused. Bruce thought he might hear a bedside lamp being slowing crushed inside a superpowered fist. Finally, Clark said, "That would not be a good idea. Because I would kill him."

"Well you're not giving us any." Bruce leaned against the wall. Wally's eyes were big as the dinner plates at a greasy spoon diner. "So start spitting out stuff Kara wants or I'm dragging Wally into a sex shop."

Yep. That was definitely a lamp being broken in the background. Bruce made a mental note to send Clark and Lois a giftcard to Target.

"She's a teenage girl, Bruce. I know that that's the one area you _don't_ have expertise in, or so I hope—"

Bruce made another mental note, this time to send Clark a package full of kryptonite daggers.

"—so get something pink and shiny and she'll be happy." Another long pause. "I don't know. What do they do together?"

"Make out," Bruce said, matter-of-fact. Wally acted like he wanted to sink through the pavement. "So…chapstick? Or can we just stick with the safe idea and get her a fancy gemstone bracelet?"

"Why wouldn't you just get her a bracelet?" Clark asked.

"No. Jewelry." Wally crossed his arms. Bruce sighed and got off the phone without apologizing for waking Clark up.

"You have half an hour, Wally, you'd better pick something out quick." They were passing another vintage store, this one stocked with furniture and old toys. Bruce suddenly realized that Wally was no longer behind him. He turned just in time to see the door to the antique store falling closed.

"Wally?" he walked in to see the kid standing in front of what was possibly the frilliest, fanciest, girliest doll Bruce had ever seen. It was about three feet tall, with a headful of blond curls, a pink frilly taffeta dress, and tiny bejeweled shoes. It was the type of thing a princess in the 1880's would have played with.

Wally clapped his hands to both sides of his face and shrieked, "It's PERFECT!"

Bruce stared at him, then it, then back at him. This had to be the weirdest relationship ever, teenage or not. At this point, he was actually hoping this was some sort of fetish thing.

A tiny old woman behind the counter was dressed in the same sort of frilly clothing as all of her dolls. She glared at both of them like they were about to commit shenanigans.

Wally, oblivious to the fact that they were two grown men looking at a doll, checked the price tag. His face fell. "It's two hundred and eighty-five dollars. I don't _have_ two hundred and eighty-five dollars."

Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose. Good god. "How much did you think a birthstone bracelet was going to cost, Wally?"

"The ones at Wal-Mart were fifteen bucks."

The doll looked down at them. Bruce repressed a thought of how damn creepy that thing was and then uttered a sentence he had never once thought would pass through his lips: "I will buy the doll for you, if you promise me that we can leave right now."

"Thank you, Bats!" Wally leapt across the space between them and hugged him, before realizing that this was a stupid idea and jumping backward. Bruce just took the doll of the shelf (it was so large and heavy that it was actually rather difficult to carry) and paid the woman.

So finally (_finally_) they were walking back down the boulevard, to the JLA transporter point. The doll was too big to fit into any sort of embarrassment-covering, so they took turns carrying the thing down the street.

It was Bruce's turn when it happened.

He was juggling the damn thing, trying not to crunch the absurdly delicate curls while also not killing himself by tripping on the pavement. His shoe caught in the crack and Wally grabbed his arm to stop him from falling smack onto the doll.

"Bruce?" The voice sounded like it hoped it was wrong. It was also terribly female.

Bruce spun around to find Selina standing there, dressed head-to-toe in variously textured black leather and jersey. Her scarlet-lipsticked mouth had dropped open. Meanwhile, he was carrying a fancy doll with Wally holding his arm.

"Um." His eyes caught the very expensive necklace in her right hand. "Did you steal that."

Selina looked down at it. "Tell you what—don't chase me and I promise to never, ever mention the fact that you are carrying a gigantic doll again. Or ask why on earth _you_ have a doll like that."

He nodded. What other choice was there?

And as soon as she'd left (nearly at a run) he turned and thrust the doll back into Wally's hands. "_You_ carry it. And next time you want to buy your girlfriend something, get her earrings like a normal person."


	19. Funeral

A/N: Geez…is this really two weeks late? Sorry—I've been working on my next FF project (a big multichapter one, but that's all I'm saying for now ) and I forgot to work on this one two.

But next up is the finale, and I'm still open for what you guys want to see in it! This will probably be my last one-shot until at least next spring, so I want to make it good.

Ugh, and sorry for the weird posting issues. I don't know why doesn't seem to like me lately.

~Funeral~

Clark was alone in the church, sitting in the first pew in his best suit with his head bowed. The others would have walked back to the house now, where the counter would be filled with casseroles and salads from the neighbors and red plastic cups of pop.

The church doors opened and footsteps moved up the aisle towards him. Clark didn't look up. The person slid into the pew beside him.

"Hey," Bruce said. He handed over a white envelope. "Here."

Clark slashed the paper through with his thumb, saw the card with _Deepest Sympathies_ in scrawling cursive and the roses almost burst out laughing right then. "Oh god, Bruce. You honestly didn't have to. It's a bit insane, coming from you."

"Yeah. I kind of hate them too." Bruce took the card out of his hands and shredded it in four quick strokes, letting the bits of cardstock flutter to the church floor. They both stared at it for a while. Finally Bruce looked at him and said, "I'm sorry, Clark."

If the card had brought him to the verge of laughter, getting this from _Bruce_ almost made him cry. Because that meant it was real. That two days ago Ma really had woken up to find Pa dead at the breakfast nook, and he really had flown back to Smallville on a red-eye flight to plan a funeral. He bit his lip hard.

Bruce hesitantly put his arm around Clark's shoulders and patted him awkwardly on the back.

Clark's eyes watered.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, turning away from Bruce. "But if _you're_ trying to be comforting, then this really is all real. Pa's really gone."

He pressed his hands, palms together like he was praying, against his mouth. Bruce looked down at the flagstones under his feet. When his parents had died, it had been Alfred shielding him from the oh-so-sincere "sympathies" of their vulture friends. He didn't know how to do this—this thing with a church and a potluck luncheon and a corral of friends. He hadn't known how to do it for Dick or Jason or Tim.

He certainly didn't know how to handle a crying Clark. Clark was supposed to be the smiling one who was always there.

Diana so should have been the one that stayed. But he'd thought that he would be able to find the words.

"I know he's better off," Clark said, between two very deep breaths. "After the heart attack it was killing him to watch Ma doing so much of the work around the farm. But...but I…I know it selfish but I want my dad back." The tears started coming. He leaned against Bruce, head on his shoulder.

"It's okay." Bruce rubbed his back, mimicking what Alfred had done when Ma had broken down in the living room. "It's going to be all right."

"No, no its not." Clark's voice was choked to the point of straining and it still echoed through the empty, empty church. They were the last ones—even the priest had gone and Pa Kent's body had been moved to the cemetery where it would go under the dirt. "I run on _solar power_. Pa died and then Ma will, and then Lois and you and even Diana and J'onn and it'll be just me, alone."

"It didn't know you thought about that," Bruce said, softly. What else was there? It was true. Clark looked like he'd stopped aging at thirty, whereas Bruce was feeling the effects of fifteen years of warring more every day.

"How could I not?" The tears slowed but Clark didn't take his head off Bruce's shoulder. "And its not like I was going to go to you about my emotional turmoil. You have enough of your own."

"Your cells _are_ going to wear out, you know. Not for a long time, but you're not immortal. And you could have talked to me. I can't always be the one running to you." Bruce wrapped his arm around Clark. Apparently the comforting impulse got easier. "And, being selfish myself, I would rather be the mortal one."

"Don't say that," Clark muttered, even though it was what he had just before.

Bruce smiled, just a little, and shook his head. "Between Mom and Dad and Jason and everyone else, I've outlived enough of my family." He was almost surprised to find stiffness in his own throat and swallowed hard. This was why he hated funerals.

"It's supposed to get better, right?" Clark asked.

Bruce nodded. "It does."

"Promise?"

"I promise."

Clark looked at him. "Are you tearing up?"

"No." Which was true. A little extra blinking was _not_ tearing up. Not that he'd ever been able to hide anything from a guy with x-ray vision anyway. "Sorry. But you are supposed to be the stable one. I'm not good at it."

Clark smiled at that, and wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his disastrously wrinkled suit. "Pa thought you were funny, you know. Especially that one Christmas when I dragged you over there and you refused to take off the costume. He kept excusing himself so he could go laugh his head off in the kitchen."

"It was a precaution!" Bruce protested. "I didn't know your parents."

"I hate to be the one to tell you this, but that suit looks ridiculous when you're sitting on the couch in a daylight living room." Clark chuckled at the memory. "I think the only reason he didn't say something was because he thought Ma was going to try and adopt you with the way she kept pushing gingersnaps on you."

Bruce sighed. Clark pulled away from him, smoothing out the worst of his suit's wrinkles. The sun had gone from overhead to shining through the red dress of the Blessed Virgin. Bruce stood up. "Well she's going to disown me if we miss lunch. So we should probably be getting back to the farm."

Clark nodded and followed him down the aisle.

They paused just once, at the oaken doors. Clark took one last look around the church. The baby powder smell of holy water still lingered in the air. He slipped a hymnal that someone had left lying on a pew back into the pocket at the side of the seat and looked back to Bruce. "Thank you."

Bruce had his hand on the door, halfway to escaping the air heavy from the sunlight. "Well, I'm glad it helped."

"You're better at it than you think," Clark said, as they walked together towards the dusty Kansas afternoon. "Now come on, let's get back home to Ma."


	20. Anniversary

A/N: Well, here it is, the last chapter! Thanks for reading, everyone. I'm working on two new fanfic projects now-one is a short thing for the Young Justice archive and the other is a long project that I've got about 6,000 words in right now :)

I just have one quick note about the timeline—this story takes place about 4 years after Starcrossed (I usually like to think that Justice League was 5 years, a year in between for Starcrossed & the aftermath, and the then Unlimited was 2 years).

~Anniversary~

"It would be perfect." Wally was practically down on his knees on the conference room floor. "Please, Bats. Please."

Bruce looked down at Wally and wondered how on earth the kid had managed to get the personality of a cartoon character. "No, Wally. For one, I am busy and everyone else—except you apparently—is too. And I'm not going to do that to Alfred."

"Alfred says you ought to socialize more," Wally said, even though it got him a murderous look. "And he likes cooking for people." He paused for about thirty seconds. "Pleasepleaseplease—we've got to do something special, Bats. I'll tell you what—if you let me do this I won't do a Halloween party. C'mon, it's been _ten years_."

Bruce started to cut him off, but Wally jumped on it. "The seven of us never hang out anymore."

"We never _did_ hang out."

Wally sighed, shoulders falling. He gave Bruce a long, lonely puppy-dog look—which had never worked all the times he tried to use it to get out of monitor duty or cafeteria duty or a particularly boring mission. He slumped quite dramatically along the wall, adopting the posture of a rag doll. Bruce rolled his eyes.

"Fine," Wally said. "I guess that it was kind of silly. We're just coworkers, after all. Not friends or anything."

Bruce looked at him. Wally stayed limp against the wall. After wondering if he were really going to do this, he took a deep breath and said, "Okay. You can do it. But_ you_ are telling Alfred, and _you_ are inviting everyone and _you_ are going to set the table, clean up, and be gone by ten. Agreed?"

Wally went from rag doll to a rabid chipmunk in the space of seconds. He ran out into the hall and shouted, "Supes! Shayera! Di! Bats agreed to let us have the party at his house!"

Bruce realized that it would be a very, very long night.

**_*First Course*_**

Alfred was stirring the soup, tasting now and then and adding salt or pepper. Bruce was sitting on the counter, watching and having second thoughts. "You know, Alfred, maybe we don't need such a formal meal. Three courses are probably perfectly fine."

Alfred tapped off the spoon on the edge of the pot and said with just a hint of disapproval, "It has been ten years since the founding of the Justice League, sir. The fact that you have managed to keep these lovely people's acquaintance for that long is cause for celebration."

Bruce ignored the jab—he knew which battles he couldn't win. Instead he stole some of the shaved dark chocolate that was going to go into the dessert and popped it in his mouth for a last-minute endorphin boost. In the hall, the doorbell rang.

**_*Second Course*_**

Alfred had cleared away the soup bowls and put salads in their place. Diana, seated to the right of Bruce (he was pretty sure Alfred had done that on purpose) dug in and practically moaned at how good the candied pecans were.

"I can't believe it's been a decade," Clark said, for the fifth time. Bruce had been watching him and he'd only had one glass of red wine. Maybe Kryptonians were unusually prone to nostalgia. "Remember when the Joker did that reality-show thing with the bombs in Vegas?"

"That was crazy, wasn't it?" Wally's salad was already gone. "Seriously—confetti? But that Ace kid was freaking weird. Actually, I think anyone from Gotham is freaking weird."

Bruce, Alfred, and the two Robins (who had been invited merely because no one could keep them out) all gave him a capital-L Look. Wally just shrugged, because in truth he was kind of right.

"You know who was creepy?" Shayera asked. "That Doctor Dream guy. God—going into people's nightmares and trapping them in their own worst fears. I never, ever want to have to deal with _him_ again."

"You won't have to." Bruce viciously stabbed a piece of romaine. "I'm pretty sure I fried his mind. I doubt he has as much as an independent thought anymore."

The table went a little quiet.

"You know what, Bruce?" Clark took his wineglass (filled with ice water, no alcohol) and dumped the contents back into the pitcher. Then he topped the glass with red wine and plunked it down back in front of Bruce. "You need to relax a little."

Bruce reached for the wineglass like he was going to dump it out in the conveniently-placed potted ficus behind his chair. Clark zapped him with heat vision, just enough to make his hand snap back. Diana covered her mouth with her napkin to stifle a giggle.

**_*Third Course*_**

"Tim, you can't take all the lox." Bruce leaned across the table and took the platter back from his youngest Robin. For the fish course, Alfred had set out trays of shrimp, smoked fish, and mixed seafood (though everyone but Bruce and Dick picked out the octopus).

"Aww…" Tim pouted. "But Wally doesn't like fish. Can't I have his bit? He's eating all the shrimp, after all."

Bruce looked over. Wally had taken a serving bowl and heaped about three hundred shrimp into it, plus about a pint of Alfred's famous curry dipping sauce. He was sitting cross-legged on the chair with his bounty in his lap. Bruce felt a migraine building. "Wally. Put the shrimp back."

Then he saw that Dick had almost barricaded himself behind a pile of crab legs. Dick glanced up guiltily but didn't stop cracking shells.

"Boys." Bruce directed it more at Dick and Tim, figuring he had almost zero authority over Wally when they were out of costume. "There are going to be three more courses, including beef. Put the damn fish back on the damn table."

"But its so good," Dick said.

"Put it back or I'm giving you double patrol this week."

Dick did as he was told.

Diana leaned over to him and touched his hand. "You know, women find men very attractive when they're playing Daddy."

Bruce looked at Dick and Tim, who were now having a thumb war. He decided that wine was going to be a good thing tonight.

**_*Fourth Course*_**

After Alfred cleared away the fish, Shayera had excused herself to use the restroom. Unfortunately, since it was Wayne Manor, she'd had a damned hard time finding one. Worse was that once she finally did, she realized that she didn't know how to get back.

"Lost?" She turned around and saw John behind her, leaning against wallpaper that probably cost more than his rent. "This place is insane. I think I passed two pools. And a bedroom with a gold bed."

"I don't think _Bruce_ knows what's all here." Shayera looked down the three branching hallways in front of them and chose one at random. She pushed open one of the doors (carved mahogany—it looked about a hundred years old) and found a musty office with a layer of dust across every surface. The stationary on the desk had a date from the 1950's.

"Sheesh." John picked up a first edition of _The Great Gatsby_. "I could've sworn there was another one of these in the main library."

"Is that the one with the red drapes?"

"No, it's got green sofas." John thought about it. "How many rooms does this place have?"

"I don't think this was the way we came." They closed the room and went back down the second hallway, which was lit only with small lights every twenty feet. They were hallway down when they realized the walls were lined with the faces of Waynes. "Look at all these people. Maybe this is why Bruce is so freaky—can you imagine growing up with your ancestors staring down at you all day?"

"Think about it—if he screwed up his parents could say 'Go look a great-great-Uncle Seamus, _he_ didn't get a C on his report card." John pointed at the portrait of a particularly scary looking thin man with a scythe in his hand. "Or 'Go look at the portrait of great-Grandmother Cynthia, the famous pianist, while you think about not practicing that piano.'"

Shayera laughed, and pushed open the new room to find what could only be described as a Prohibition-era speakeasy. She opened up a walnut cabinet and found bottles of bourbon and rum from the 1880's. "Do you think this stuff is still good?"

"Hard liquor? It's probably even better." John pulled the top off one of the bottles and they both took a swig. It took a little while for it to kick in. "Did you see Bruce and Diana?"

Shayera found drinking glasses under the bar and cleaned them off with her sleeve. John poured her some rum. "How long have they been going on like this? Nine and a half years? Are they dating again or not?"

John shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe if Clark gets Bruce drunk enough we can get him to play her 'Ode to Joy' or something."

"What about you and Vixen?" she asked, feeling the courage from the liquor setting in.

John paused, sipping his own drink. "We're…still together. I mean, we had a fight, sort of. She wants to go further than I do right now."

"She wants a ring?" Shayera downed the rest of her rum.

"I don't think I should really be talking about this with my ex-girlfriend." He looked down into his glass.

Maybe it was the rum. Maybe it was the four years they'd been apart. She liked Mari. She _did_. But she wanted John enough to lean across the bar and kiss him sloppily across the mouth. "How about not-ex?"

**_*Fifth Course*_**

"Where are John and Shayera?" Diana asked, as Alfred swept away their untouched steaks and put out the cheese course.

"If they're together?" Wally asked through a mouthful of gouda, "probably making out."

Everyone gave him a look.

J'onn cleared his throat in the awkward silence. Since he rarely did it (being a shapeshifter, Bruce suspected he didn't even need to) the rest all turned to him, even Tim. J'onn glanced down at his plate and very, very deliberately spread goat cheese across a cracker. "I was going to tell you all this together, but I do not think I can wait through this entire dinner."

Wally's eyes got as big as his plate. "Is it something bad?"

A pencil-thin Martian smile flickered across J'onn's face. "No. No, it's not bad at all."

Diana put her hand on his arm. "Then what is it? Come on, tell us!"

"I have been dating Lijuan for over a year and a half now, and last week I asked her to be my wife." The smile grew, and his orange eyes brightened up. Diana breathed in softly and jumped over to hug him.

"Lijuan? Why haven't we met this lady before?" Wally was talking with his mouth full; practically spewing cracker crumbs across the table. Alfred discreetly dabbed them away. "Is she pretty?"

J'onn flashed a mental picture of a Chinese woman, probably around seventy years old, through their minds. She was pretty, in a grandmother sort of way. Wally wrinkled his nose, but squelched it when Clark elbowed him none-too-gently.

Bruce, who by now had downed more wine than he had in the past year, raised his glass. "To you, then, J'onn. Congratulations."

They toasted.

**_*Sixth Course*_**

Bruce had his head against the back of the chair, slumped down. "I think I'm drunk. Clark, you got me drunk. I have _patrol_."

"You're not drunk," Clark replied, even though Bruce was practically limp in the chair and he'd let Diana twine her arm through his. "You've had maybe four glasses. That's not nearly enough to get drunk."

"He never drinks," Diana replied, obviously enjoying Bruce's relative cuddliness. "So he doesn't have the best alcohol tolerance. And I think it's been six glasses."

Bruce chuckled and kissed her hair. Wally stopped eating his chocolate mousse and stared. He didn't stay for long, though, because Shayera and John tumbled through the dining room door and collapsed on the floor. John had Shayera's lipstick across his face.

"Um." Wally, for the first time in ever, had not finished his dessert. "You guys have fun."

"We—we…" John got to his feet and dumped an empty bottle on the table. "Bruce, you realize you got hundred-and-twenty-year-old rum in the house?"

Bruce's eyes went from John to Shayera and back to John. He grinned. "You finally worked up the balls to get her back?"

Shayera gaped. "You wanted me back? Bastard!"

Alfred reached over and removed the wine.

Clark raised an eyebrow and John and Bruce. "Since when do you two compare love lives?"

Bruce waved him off and tried to drink from his now empty wineglass. Diana took it out of his hand and gave him a spoonful of mousse instead. "No patrol for you tonight. Honestly, Clark, you couldn't have made my boyfriend just tipsy enough to be personable without being flat-out drunk?"

Bruce stared at her. "I'm not drunk." He didn't seem to realize he'd dropped his spoon on the tablecloth.

Diana let him kiss her again and sighed. "Oh, yes you are. Too bad there isn't a way to make you like this _and _stay sober."

Wally scraped the last of his mousse up from the bowl and muttered, "How am I the most normal person here?"


End file.
